GIJoe: SERE
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: A new member brings new challenges for the Joe team. Book 2 in the 'Special Missions' series. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1: News

**Chapter 1: News**

"Bad news, General?"

General Hawk raised his eyes from the letter he held to see Warrant Officer Dashiell Faireborn, codenamed Flint, and Staff Sergeant Alison Hart-Burnett, codenamed Lady Jaye, standing in the doorway to his office. His door was open, and here at Joe base it was generally understood that if General Hawk's office door was open it meant you could walk in and talk to him. If it was closed you didn't disturb unless you had to, and of course, if you heard shouting you didn't disturb under pain of instant death. Or mess hall cleanup duty.

However, Flint and Lady Jaye were not only his soldiers, but they were personal friends too, and they had stopped at his door when they saw the look on his face, one that they recognized from long association that heralded bad news. They were out of uniform, so they were officially off-duty and could approach him as a friend. And what were friends for if not to sympathize with bad news?

He sighed as he put the letter down and beckoned them in. "Come on in, you two," he said, and they came in. It amused him the way they walked in step with each other, shoulder-to-shoulder; despite all the rules about fraternization between officers (especially officers with disparity in rank; Flint was a Warrant Officer and Lady Jaye was a Staff Sergeant) Hawk had long since acknowledged that there was nothing he could do about it; if he reassigned either one he would lose both, and they were two of the 'irreplaceable' officers he had on base. He'd privately concluded some time ago that as long as what they had together didn't affect their performance, he could safely ignore the rule. On paper, that is. And the close bond they shared could be a good thing sometimes, team-wise.

And anyway, this had nothing to do with them, except peripherally. He waited until they'd made themselves comfortable on the chairs in front of his desk before he handed Flint the letter. "Read this."

Lady Jaye read quicker than Flint did, so she was the first one to exclaim, "They're sending you to Fort Bragg for a SERE refresher course?"

Hawk nodded, seeing the distaste on his face mirrored on hers. "I'm to report there at the end of next week for the full 21 day course. And this is for the Level C training, which means the Resistance portion of the course is going to be…much more difficult."

Flint snorted. "'Difficult' is an understatement. Nothing about SERE is easy, but the resistance part…" he trailed off, shaking his head.

'SERE' was a military acronym for 'Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape'. The term referred to a 21 day course usually taken during or just after basic training. The courses were geared to helping the soldier learn skills that would help them survive if they ever found themselves in a situation behind enemy lines with no help immediately reachable.

There were three portions of the course. The first week there, the students would receive classroom instruction in survival, evasion, resistance and escape techniques.

The second week was devoted to practical application of what they'd been taught the first week in the classroom. Called Survival & Evasion, it was geared toward teaching the soldier how to survive if caught behind enemy lines; how to find or construct adequate shelter, how to find food and potable water in a wilderness situation, how to build a fire and provide for basic necessities when you had an absolute minimum of tools handy (the course ran on the supposition that if you were behind enemy lines you'd only have 'basic issue' with you—the regulation items every soldier carried with them.) 'Evasion' taught the soldiers how to navigate in dense terrain, how to orient oneself with north and south, east and west; how to cover your trail so anyone looking for you would be (hopefully) unable to find you. For some soldiers, this was easy; for others, particularly those who'd lived their entire lives in the city and had only ever seen trees on a street corner, this could be one of the harder parts of the course.

The last week would be spent in the Resistance Training Lab; a mock prisoner of war camp in which soldiers would be treated to a taste of what a real POW camp would be like. Forced physical training, sleep deprivation, withholding of food and water for extended periods…Hawk remembered all too well what the course was like even though it had been a decade or more since he'd gone through it. And that was the Level A training! This time he was scheduled for a Level C course—the upper level, more intensive course designed for those soldiers who, because of their MOS—military operating specialty—assignment, or, as in Clayton's case, rank and seniority, would make them more valuable exploitation targets for an enemy.

"I take it this is a reaction to your being kidnapped by Velez with Olivia—and your subsequent trip to Colombia," Lady Jaye took a guess.

"That would be the assumption, yes," Hawk said. "Even though, were they to ask my opinion about this, I wasn't the target, and Velez never once asked me for any classified information except the codes to communicate his demand for Alex with you. So I'm going to pack light and plan to leave next Wednesday. Knowing that we can't leave from here, the instructions are to have someone drive me to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where there are a couple of other SERE students waiting, and we're all going to Fort Bragg in North Carolina on the same flight."

Flint broke in. "I don't understand why they're sending you to Fort Bragg. We have survival experts here, and I'm sure what Velez put you and Olivia through was nothing like what you'll experience there."

Hawk raised an eyebrow as he considered that, comparing what he'd experienced at Velez's hands with what he remembered of his long-ago SERE course. "You're right about that," he conceded finally, "But orders are orders. Maybe I can recommend some changes to the SERE program to make it a little more…realistic."

"Absolutely not," Flint shook his head. "If new recruits right out of Academy had to go through what I went through with Alex, they'd quit right there and go get a job somewhere else." His dark brown eyes were haunted, and Hawk was forcibly reminded that his Warrant Officer now had scars on his body that hadn't been there before this latest mission to the DRC, courtesy of a militia warlord…and what he'd experienced was much worse than what Hawk had gone through.

"I'm surprised they aren't sending you through the refresher course with me," Hawk said lightly, and Flint ducked his head.

"Don't _mention_ it. Don't _breathe_ it. Don't even _think_ it." Flint warned. "I hope to put that off as long as possible. I know eventually they're going to remember and send me through the damned course, but at least for now they've forgotten me and I'd like to keep it that way!"

Lady Jaye smiled at her lover, then looked back at Hawk. "So you're leaving next Wednesday? At least that gives you enough time to say goodbye to Olivia. How is she doing, by the way? I think you went with Ettienne to see her last week, when he went to see Alex?"

Clayton smiled fondly, dropping the stiff 'commanding officer' mode in favor of just being Clayton Abernathy. "She's doing great. It's only been a month and a half, and she's not showing much, but at least her nausea's under control and she's got her appetite back. Alex is keeping a careful eye on her, and when I saw her last Monday she was about to give in to the inevitable and tell her commanding officer that she's expecting."

Allie shook her head. "She should have told him already."

"I rather get the feeling she's slightly worried about what he'll say and what he'll think. Being told she's pregnant so soon after her unexpected trip to Columbia, he's bound to expect the worst. Would _you_ tell me right away if _you_ were expecting?"

Allie froze, thinking about that. Clayton and Dash stared at her expectantly, waiting for her reply. She finally cleared her throat and said "No comment."

Dash's smile grew truly insufferable; Clayton had to rub his chin to hide the grin that threatened to erupt. "Okay. Get along, both of you. I was planning on going with Ettienne this evening to see Alex and Liv, and I want to pick her up some of those chocolates she likes from that little shop in the Village on our way there. Now that the nausea's gone she can finally enjoy them."

"I told you it would be different as she got further along," Allie teased Clayton, but Clayton shook his head adamantly.

"My viewpoint on kids and whether I'm going to physically be there hasn't changed. I'm just supporting her."

"Riiight," Allie drawled as she stood up. "You just keep telling yourself that, maybe one of these days you might even actually believe it. Come on, Dash."

"It _hasn't_ changed," Clayton insisted, but he found himself talking to empty air; Allie and Dash were already gone. He'd given the Joes liberal leave that night; he was willing to bet that Courtney Krieger and Wayne Sneedon, aka Cover Girl and Beach Head, were already on their way out to their favorite Canal Street dive—and that meant that around two in the morning the base communications center would field a call from the owner of that dive, Clayton's personal friend and retired Army buddy, to come and get his wayward children. Despite the fact that Beach Head was technically in charge after Hawk, Flint and Duke, his relationship with Corporal Courtney Krieger tended to have a reverse effect on his maturity and that could sometimes get him in trouble. What mitigated it—albeit only slightly—was that without him Courtney would probably get in more trouble than she could handle and while she could bring Wayne's maturity level down, he also brought hers up. Slightly. And when they got into trouble both of them would confess right away and accept whatever discipline Hawk decided to dish out without complaint.

And speaking of complaining…

He met Ettienne in the garage making sure the lights on the Hummer they used for city transport was working and it was completely fueled up. "You and Alex got plans tonight?" he asked the Marine.

"Mmm. It depends on what she's up to but I'm kind of leaning towards taking her out for dinner and a movie. She's been really stressed the last week."

"What's wrong?"

"Well…she's not really talking to me much about it and I will brace her on it at some point, but I kind of get the feeling that after globetrotting for the last three years with the ICC, she's finding it hard to settle in to normal run-of-the-mill prosecutorial work. She got a letter yesterday from Lieutenant General Johnson reiterating his willingness to recommend her for work with the JAG office, and while she hasn't said anything yet, I think she's considering it." Ettienne grinned. "You gotta admit when you've seen the world it's hard to go back to an old job. Particularly when it's as boring as her job."

"Is she calling it 'boring' or are you calling it 'boring'?" Clayton swung easily into the front passenger seat, grateful that he'd been able to get rid of the crutches he'd been hobbling around on for the last month. For an active military man, having to hobble around on crutches after breaking a leg was almost torture in and of itself. He was pushing himself a bit, trying to get back the muscle he'd lost when his leg was wrapped in a cast—all the more important right now because he was going to North Carolina at the end of the next week.

"Both of us, actually," Ettienne admitted as he got into the driver's side and started the Hummer. "I got downtown early two days ago and went to the courthouse to sit in on Alex's case. She got her conviction but I could see she was bored with the whole thing, and when we got back to the apartment she got dressed to go out, what she put on told me a lot about her state of mind."

"Hold on. You can tell what she's thinking by the way she dresses?" Clayton stared at Ettienne in disbelief. "When's the bachelor party?"

Ettiennne chuckled as they swung out of the motor pool into the inclined ramp that took them from the first level of HQ to the surface of Staten Island, then swung away from the Battery Weed lighthouse to take the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Brooklyn, and then to Manhattan. "No time soon, so don't hold your breath. But really, if she's bored with her day and looking for a little excitement she puts on something slightly racy, something risqué. Two days ago it was a tube top under a see-through lace t-shirt. In red." He cleared his throat. "As a man I approved of that top. As her boyfriend taking her out to a club…I wanted to put my jacket on her shoulders and cover her up."

"Is she still self-conscious about her scars?"

"To some extent, yeah," Ettienne admitted. "But she's relaxed a bit and she'll wear very thin lacy tops over a cami or tank if she doesn't think we'll be going to a place where she's going to get stares. Particularly a dimly-lit bar or club." He switched topics. "You got plans for Liv tonight?"

Clayton shook his head. "Nah. I gave up after two or three of our dates over the last month got ruined by her job. The first time we were going to go catch a movie and she ended up pulling an all-nighter on a case. The second time she was just too damn tired to actually do anything and she was asleep almost as soon as we got in her car. She apologized, but I could see she really was tired and I just took her back in. The third time she just didn't feel like going out anywhere. I've learned not to make plans ahead of time; I'll just gauge her mood when I get there and we'll fly by the seat of our pants. She likes our booth at Knickerbockers, so if she's up to going anywhere that's usually where we end up."

Ettienne shook his head. "Jeez. At least Alex is easier."

"Alex has a job where she sits at a desk most of the day and paces around a courtroom for what's left of it. Liv's job is a lot harder and more physical and it's rougher on her, and I don't blame her for wanting to just kick back and relax." Clayton said defensively.

"Hey. Easy. I understand, I really do." Ettienne looked slightly sheepish. "It's just hard getting some time alone with Alex. We end up fooling around in the back seat most of the time because you and Liv got the apartment."

Clayton turned. Looked at the back seats in the Hummer. Looked at Ettienne. Looked at the back seats again. "_Those_ back seats."

Ettienne grinned cheerfully. "Yep."

"Those _specific_ back seats."

"Um-hmm." Unrepentant.

"Oh my God, I can't even imagine what Courtney would say if she knew what was happening in one of her 'babies'."

"I'll have you know that when the seats are folded down there's just enough space to have a little fun if you don't mind being close. And before you think about what Courtney would say, who do you think found out how much room is available in the back when the seats are folded down?"

"You mean…Courtney and Wayne…"

"I wouldn't have thought of it myself."

Clayton shook his head. "I think I'd rather not think about that. Really. I'm going to forget you told me that. Turn around and drive, Gunnery Sergeant."


	2. Chapter 2: First Aid

**Chapter 2: First Aid**

It wasn't hard to forget the conversation in the car when they got to Liv's apartment. In fact, it wasn't hard to forget anything at all when he knocked on the door and Alex opened it—and the first thing he saw was the bloodstained wet washcloth in her hand. "Alex!" Ettienne exclaimed.

"It's not me, it's Liv," Alex said tiredly, and Clayton forgot completely about both her and Ettienne as he pushed past them both into Olivia's living room.

"Are you okay?" He never even remembered crossing the room afterward; he just suddenly found himself crouching next to the couch, looking horrified at the large bruise discoloring her cheek and the split skin on her cheekbone leaking blood down the side of her face. He reached out absently and felt Alex drop the wet washcloth into it, and he applied pressure to the bleeding cut. "Jesus, Liv, what the hell happened?"

She winced at the pressure he was applying. "Ow. Easy, Clayton, I'm fine, you don't have to fly off the handle. Do you get this worried over one of your soldiers?"

"I have to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. What happened?" He was well acquainted by now with all of her tricks; when she got hurt on the job and he got concerned, she'd either try to brush it off or get him started on another topic. If it was something little, a simple bruise or scratch or some scraped skin, he'd allow her to draw him off topic. But this one looked nasty and he wasn't going to let it go.

And she knew it; he knew she knew her tricks weren't going to work this time by the way she sighed. "Perp took a swing at me while I was cuffing him. It wasn't serious."

"Not serious! Liv, you need to redefine 'serious' then, because this is nasty. What the hell was he wearing, brass knuckles?"

"What she's _not _telling you is that he took a swing at her; she evaded and knocked him to the ground, and that was when he came up with a gun and slammed it across her face. She's lucky he didn't fracture her cheekbone like I did." Clayton was forcibly reminded that the blond lawyer had a plate installed under her eye holding her cheekbone together, broken almost five months ago, courtesy of a brutal pistol whipping from a bloodthirsty warlord in the DRC. Alex was standing on the opposite side of the couch, arms folded, and that wasn't just her tired look, that was her 'I'm pissed' look. "Elliot and I told her she needed to go to the hospital to get it looked at but she refused." The glare she shot Olivia was full of anger, but it was anger borne of concern for her best friend.

"Did you lose consciousness?" Clayton stopped dabbing at the bleeding split long enough to look into Olivia's brown eyes, trying to gauge her pupil dilation.

"No," Olivia said.

"Yes," Alex snapped.

Clayton sat back, looked intently at Liv. She looked up at him but couldn't—quite—meet his eyes. And that told him who was telling the truth. "Liv, if you lost consciousness you need to get checked by a doctor. You could have a concussion."

"I'm fine!" she pushed him away, swung her feet over the side of the couch. "What Alex isn't telling you is that this happened around two this afternoon and it's almost six now. I didn't lose consciousness!" She quailed before his stern look, the look that could get even the rebellious Courtney Krieger to listen to General Hawk the commanding officer. "Okay, not all the way."

"Not all the…" he sighed and gave up. Liv was stubborn as hell when she wanted to be; as stubborn, in her own way, as he was. But so were the other girls at base, Allie and Shana, and from watching their men deal with them on base—Dash, in Allie's case, and Snake Eyes, in Shana's—he knew how to handle stubbornness. "All right. Fine. No hospital." She smiled, thinking she'd won, then frowned as he said in the next breath, "Sit down. You're not getting off that couch tonight."

The smile disappeared. "But—"

"No 'buts'. If you're going to be such a stubborn idiot that you can't recognize when you have to get checked you'll have to deal with the consequences. And one of them is that you're not getting off that couch tonight." He pointed at the couch. "Lie down." And when Clayton Abernathy got that tone in his voice, no one disobeyed. Not even a certain stubborn, lovable, irritating, exasperating NYPD cop.

She lay down, but there was a certain slump to her shoulders that made him think she wasn't entirely unhappy with his directive, and he wondered about that even as he went to her refrigerator and opened it. Good; the steaks he'd brought the last time he came were still there, and oh, yes, there was that bag of frozen peas. He had no idea how old it was, but it would suffice for what he wanted it for; they weren't going to eat them, after all. "Ettienne. Think you can do something with a couple of steaks?"

"I t'ink I could maybe come up wit' a t'ing or two to do wit' dem." Ettienne's accent thickened with delight; he liked cooking, and it was rarely that he got a chance to exercise his skill.

"Get Alex to help you in the kitchen." Clayton came out holding the bag of frozen peas and wrapped a clean dry washcloth around it, then laid it—gently—against Liv's bruised cheek. "Hold that there," he directed her, and she reached up to hold it as he opened the medical kit sitting on the coffee table.

When he'd first met her he'd run up against that stubborn streak; the first time he'd spent the night was after a shootout that left her hands and knees skinned, and she'd refused to get checked out then too. When he and Ettienne had brought Alex and Olivia home after coming back from New Zealand, he'd brought one of the Joes' medical kits with him and quietly replaced the store-bought first aid kit in Olivia's bathroom. He'd kept an eye on it, too; he knew when she was running low on something and he brought replacement supplies when Olivia—and Alex too, albeit to a lesser extent—used up something in the kit they wouldn't be able to replace themselves. There were some things only available to a medical professional, and of course the Army got the best of all those things—and it didn't hurt to have a CMO who was generous with his supplies once he knew who it was for.

He took out the butterfly sutures and the tiny syringe pre-loaded with painkiller. Low grade stuff, but adequate for this…and if Liv was really hurting the pain would have driven her to the hospital. A moment to position the needle in her arm, another moment to push the plunger, and he withdrew the spent needle and capped it, returning it to a separate compartment of the medical kit. He'd take it with him when he left and have Doc dispose of it. Another couple of moments to lay out the rest of what he'd need—antibiotic ointment, a topical anesthetizing spray—and he saw her visibly relax as the painkillers kicked in.

Good. A quick pass with the anesthetizing spray, just to make sure her skin was numb and she wouldn't feel what he was about to do to her cheek quite as badly, and then he carefully spread his fingers out on each side of the gash, pinching the skin until it made a tight, thin line. Without the painkillers she'd be howling; as it was, she just gritted her teeth and sucked in a harsh breath as he made sure that the edges of the split met before carefully placing the adhesive butterfly sutures along her cheekbone, closing it. He had to stop several times and push the bag of frozen peas against her cheek; the cold was slowing down the blood flow enough to keep the area clean while he closed it, and another few moments saw him done. "There," he said. "Now as long as you keep your head still while you're sleeping you should be able to avoid dislodging the sutures."

"Clayton…" Olivia reached out, touched his hand as he started to gather up the spent needle, empty dressing packaging and the bloody washcloth. "Thanks."

He glanced toward the kitchen; Alex was laughing at something Ettienne had said and neither of them would hear what he was about to say. "You're welcome," he said seriously. "Olivia, why do you do that?"

To her credit, she didn't even bother to pretend she didn't know what he was talking about. "I don't know," she admitted frankly, laying her head back on the couch pillow. "I guess…there are still more guys than girls in the Department, and there's still this feeling that we have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. We try very hard not to show signs of weakness."

"But getting medical help when someone's clocked you a hard one with the butt of a gun isn't weakness, it's common sense."

She gave him a crooked smile, one that touched him because he could see tears of pain in her eyes. "You sound like Don."

He shrugged as he crumpled the last of the wrappings and tossed them into a nearby wastebasket Alex had no doubt brought out for just this purpose. "He's ex-military and a commanding officer. We have the same mentality. Did he see you?"

"Um, no. I didn't go back into the precinct when we got back."

"What did Elliot say?" He'd have bet the former Marine, Olivia's partner, would have had a mouthful to say to his stubborn partner.

Olivia sighed. "He was upset. Okay, mad. He yelled at me. I'm used to it, he does that a lot." She stared at the ceiling. "He can be contradictory, sometimes. We had a really intense case, some years back; guy named Gitano. He'd kidnapped a couple of children in one of the subway stations and El and I were combing the station for Gitano and the kids, a twin girl and boy. I found him first. He used the little boy to make me drop my gun…then he slashed my neck with the knife before he ran. Elliot saw it, and there was a split second when he didn't know who to go after, the perp or me. He came to me and I told him I was fine, and he went after Gitano…but Gitano had cut the little boy's throat and taken the little girl. Elliot's coming to see me cost a little boy his life."

"Christ." Clayton couldn't think of anything to say. How do you make that choice, between your partner and an innocent child? It was a no-win situation; if El went after the perp and Olivia had bled out on the floor while he was gone, he'd have felt guilty the rest of his life. But in checking on her before going after the killer, he'd sacrificed a child for his partner. And he guessed Olivia had felt guilty about that, too.

He was right. "We had a fight about it later at the station. Elliot was pissed and hurting and he told me he couldn't do his job if he had to watch over me all the time. I cussed him out because it wasn't true, I have his back as often as he has mine. Don stepped in and broke it up. And after the case was over I asked for a new partner, for reassignment."

Guilt over that case had torn the partnership apart. Clayton understood some of that. "Liv, Elliot is ex-Marine. That protective streak runs a lot deeper in him than it does in practically everyone else—look at Ettienne with Alex. And every Marine I've ever met had the same quality; I came to the conclusion long ago that it has to be a requirement to become one. What he said to you during that fight—he was upset and hurting and he lashed out. It wasn't a reflection on you or how you do your job, it's how he was trained to handle stress. But I take it that's why you're extra-stubborn about getting checked after something like this happens."

She nodded.

He finished cleaning up and picked up the wastebasket and first aid kit. "Lie still until I get back. Remember you're not getting off that couch tonight." She looked crestfallen; obviously she'd hoped her little story had made him forget about his prior directive. Fat chance. "Oh, and keep this in mind," he tossed back over his shoulder to her as he headed for the kitchen. "If you weren't so God-damned stubborn about going to get checked when you're hurt, maybe Elliot wouldn't feel like he has to watch over you as much." He left her considering that possibility as he replaced the medkit in the bathroom then dropped in at the kitchen to see how dinner was coming.

Alex was sitting on the kitchen counter and Ettienne stood in front of her, and both of them were blissfully lip-locked. Clayton grinned and made a show of rustling the wastebasket and making noise so that the they would know he was there, and when he looked up again they had separated, although Ettienne was grinning fit to split his face and Alex was flushed. "I was wondering what was taking those steaks so long to cook," he said mildly, and Alex's face got even pinker. "Come on, Alex. Any more of that kind of distraction and Ettienne will let those steaks overcook. And he knows I like mine rare, and I get upset when my dinner isn't done the way I like it. Commander's prerogative. Come set up that chessboard and let's keep Liv occupied watching us play."

The chess game was, as usual, engrossing enough that he hardly even noticed the passage of time until he looked up and saw Ettienne coming in from the kitchen with steaming plates. A quick glance, however, showed that Liv wouldn't be enjoying the fruits of his labors, not tonight; she was sound asleep, head on the couch pillows, hand resting on his thigh.

"Should she be asleep?" Alex frowned, though she kept her voice down. "I thought you weren't supposed to sleep after a concussion."

"That's changed. Sleep is okay, it actually helps to reset the brain after getting scrambled like that. I don't want her waking up, though. Hold that plate a minute, Ettienne, I want to get her into bed." He picked her up with a little effort; she was gaining weight with the baby, and in about another month he wouldn't be able to do this anymore—and that reminded him of what he'd wanted to tell her, but he didn't want to wake her up for that. He'd tell Alex, she'd tell Liv.

He laid her on the bed and tucked the blankets around her, making sure she was comfortable and that her head was comfortably cradled on the pillow. As he stood to leave the room, something caught his eye; a baby crib, in the corner, with a changing table next to it. There wasn't anything on the changing table yet, but the crib was neatly made. What made him laugh was that the crib's sheets and bedding were all in a definitely military motif; fluffy camo patterned blanket, light green sheets and bumper, and over it, a small mobile with fighter jets and tanks and military Humvees hanging off it. The overall effect was adorable, but he wondered about it as he softly closed Liv's bedroom door and headed back to the living room. Did the crib come like that, or was she thinking of Clayton when she'd bought the bedding? It was his baby, after all, and even though they'd mutually agreed that the baby was hers and she would raise it as a single mother, he was starting to wonder whether being part of the baby's life would really be as complicated as he'd initially thought it would, given his posting.

"It came like that," Alex said absently as she studied the board when he asked her after his next move. "Kathy—Elliot's wife—had the crib and stuff left over after Eli, their fifth child, was born…and she gave Olivia all the baby stuff she had because she declared she absolutely wasn't going to have another baby. She almost died having the last one."

She looked up from the chessboard and smiled faintly at Clayton's shocked look. "It's not what you think. Elliot forgot Kathy had an OB/GYN appointment but Liv remembered, and she was taking Kathy to it when they were hit by another car. Olivia managed to get out but Kathy was trapped, and Olivia got back in the car to provide first aid when the EMT's got there. They had to cut Kathy out of the car but the stress triggered her labor, and Olivia ended up delivering Eli while the EMTs tried to keep Kathy from crashing in the ambulance. Kathy said after that that she was absolutely not going to have another kid. She was overjoyed when she found out Liv was expecting."

"Do Elliot and Don know Liv's pregnant? Last time I saw her last weekend she said she was going to tell them."

Alex rolled her eyes. "No she hasn't told them yet. And she swore Kathy to secrecy, told her just to tell El she donated the baby stuff to a women's shelter. I told her she's being an idiot but she's really worried about what Don and El are both going to say, about how they'll suddenly get overprotective." She snorted. "If El knew she was pregnant he would have driven her to the hospital himself this afternoon, he'd have never let her walk over to the courthouse so I could drive her home."

"You got a car?" Ettienne asked her.

"Liv and I are taking turns driving her Mustang. She hardly ever drives it anyway. But I am looking for another one—I saw hers and she said she named it Alex, so I told her I wanted one and I would name it Olivia. She almost fell over laughing at that one, though I couldn't see what was so funny."

Clayton laughed so hard he choked. "The first time I saw Liv's Mustang she told me she named it Alex. I asked her if you had one named Olivia. She found that enormously funny and she told me you'd probably like the idea and get yourself one."

"I do like the idea. I'm just having trouble finding the same model year and make. 65 Mustangs aren't that easy to come by." She pointed to Clayton across the board. "Your move."


	3. Chapter 3: Apartment

**Chapter 3: Apartment**

He broached the subject of why he'd come tonight after they'd finished eating, refrigerated Olivia's plate, and Alex was studying the board carefully, planning her strategy; he had her knight pinned and she absolutely hated sacrificing her pieces. "I'm leaving for a month at the end of next week."

"What for?" Alex looked at him, startled. "I thought this was your project."

"Oh, no, I'm not being reassigned or deployed. After the fiasco with Velez, the Army's ending me to some…special training. SERE training."

Alex frowned. "Isn't that where the manual I have came from? Lady Jaye and Scarlet and Cover Girl were running me through some stress positions from it when Flint walked in and busted all our chops."

"What?" Clayton made a mental note to speak with his Warrant Officer when he got back. "Flint raked the girls over the coals about it? Why?"

"Um. I sort of didn't tell Allie and Shana and Courtney everything I went through." Alex took the white queen off the board and turned it over in her hands, not meeting his eyes. "Flint asked me why I'd let the girls put me in one of those positions when I'd barely survived it the last time." She looked at him over the board. "How do you think I tore my rotator cuffs?"

Clayton flinched. "Okay. Alex, the SERE courses are confidential, particularly the resistance phase, because the things said and done during that portion are too prone to misunderstanding by the general public. You cannot let anyone know you have it, and you can't share it with anyone. You signed a nondisclosure agreement concerning the whole affair and you're expected to comply with it."

"I showed it to Liv. We spent a couple evenings talking about it—apparently you shared some of its techniques with her to help her through her ordeal."

"It's okay. She signed a nondisclosure agreement too. But it doesn't go any further than you two."

Alex nodded and returned the white queen to the chessboard, then saluted. "Aye-aye, Sir." She pointed to him. "Your move."

A handful of moves later, she had his bishop trapped and was threatening two of his pawns. Ettienne had gotten bored with watching and was dozing slightly with the TV on when Alex suddenly picked her head up, tilted as if she were listening, and held a hand up for silence. Ettienne hit the mute button on the TV when they heard it; a soft cry, coming from Olivia's bedroom.

"She's having nightmares again." Alex got to her feet. "It doesn't happen often, but when she's stressed or in pain from an accident on the job she gets them. Let me go wake her up—" but Ettienne laid a hand on her arm; Clayton, blind and deaf to everything but Olivia's crying, was already halfway down the hall toward the bedrooms. Ettienne sat back down on the couch, tugging on Alex's hand, and after a moment she sat down beside him as he turned the TV's sound back on.

Clayton opened the door to Olivia's bedroom. There was a small nightlight plugged into the far wall, and it provided just enough light for him to see she'd gone rigid in the bed, back arched, and small, short panted breaths were hissing out from between her gritted teeth. His own back ached in sympathy as he crossed the bedroom, and his heart ached at the sight of the grimace of pain on her face. "Please…" she whispered in anguish, her voice barely audible in the darkened room.

"Liv, baby, wake up," he said quietly, reaching for her hand. "It's over, baby, it's okay, you're safe, wake up."

She cried out in panic, thrashing, and he remembered what she'd looked like, how she'd reacted, when she woke up in the cave in Medellin. "Liv, it's okay," he said quickly, and kicked off his shoes as he climbed into the bed behind her, letting her feel the solid, warm bulk of his body behind hers even as he captured her hand in his. "Liv. Sweetheart. It's Clayton. I'm right here, no one's going to hurt you again. Wake up, baby."

Her thrashing stilled when she felt him beside her, and a moment later, "Clayton?" A harsh whisper in the dark.

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "Yeah, it's me, I'm right here. It's okay, you're home and you're safe, it was just a nightmare. Relax."

"Clayton…Sandra…Velez…"

"They're gone, Liv. They're gone and they won't hurt you anymore. I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere. Well, maybe for the job, but right now I'm here."

"You're leaving? I thought the Fort Wadsworth base was your project."

"No, no, it's just temporary," and he felt her relax in his arms. "Just to North Carolina for some special training. I'll only be gone a month."

He could feel her already slipping back into sleep, and so her next words took him by surprise. "You'll be back before the baby's born, then." And even as he tried to process that, her even breathing told him she'd gone to sleep.

He lay there staring at the baby crib in the corner. Sometimes, when you weren't on your guard and you weren't thinking about what you were saying before you said it, truths could come out, and he was willing to bet that he'd just found out the truth about what Liv actually felt about the whole baby thing. Despite what she said when she was consciously thinking, inside she wasn't completely okay with his hands-off approach; she wanted her baby to have a father even though she understood that with his current assignment and enemy list both she and the unborn baby would be in danger; she was willing to accept that if it meant he'd be there.

And the more he thought about it the more he wanted to be there. It was too early to tell if the baby was a boy or a girl; but he was willing to bet his pension that Olivia herself was hoping it would be a boy. Why else would she have kept all of Eli's boy things? But she was also firm in her resolution to let him do as much—or little—as he wanted to in regards to the baby, no matter what she secretly wanted. And he was willing to bet she wanted him in the child's life, she'd grown up without a father herself. But she would sacrifice her own dreams and hopes as long as he was happy and the baby had everything it needed.

He was still torn when his eyelids closed of their own accord.

The harsh buzz of Olivia's alarm clock woke both of them the next morning, and Clayton blinked confusedly, wondering for a moment why the morning reveille didn't sound like it was supposed to. Then Olivia stirred beside him, and he felt the warmth of her body tucked comfortably against his side, and he reached over to turn the alarm off before it woke her.

"No…leave it alone…" Olivia mumbled fuzzily. "I have to get up…I have a doctor's appointment at ten."

"A doctor? Good, then you'll get that cheek checked out." He switched on the bedside lamp, ignoring her squint in the sudden brightness, and made sure the butterfly sutures he'd placed hadn't come dislodged during her nightmare the night before. They hadn't.

"Not that kind of doctor." She swung her legs over the side of the bed, yawned. "My OB/GYN."

"Is anything wrong?" Momentary panic as he wondered if something was wrong with her or the baby.

"No, just routine." She smiled crookedly at him from where she sat in bed next to him. "Because of my age I'm considered a high-risk pregnancy and the doctor said he wants to see me more frequently. I've told him Alex lives with me and she can handle it if something goes wrong, but he seems to be the old-fashioned type who thinks I should have a man around." She rolled her eyes.

_She _should_ have one around. Me._ For some reason Clayton felt guilty.

Something must have shown on his face because she leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Clayton. Stop looking guilty. Your job is your job, and I don't expect you to be around, okay?"

_But I feel like I should_, he wanted to say, but even as he opened his mouth to say it her lips captured his, and all thought fled his mind. The developing baby had changed her internal geography somewhat, and the experience felt somehow more intense, and when they finally disengaged he suddenly didn't feel like going back to base.

And the beauty of it was that he suddenly realized he didn't have to.

He'd issued orders that liberal leave was in effect; two teams had come back from special missions at once, and for one short week his entire base was together. He'd decided on the spur of the moment to give all of them a three-day pass so that soldiers who didn't normally get to see each other could, and of course what good would all that extra time be for his kids if they couldn't go and play outside? Although he'd told himself he would stay on base in case something happened, he would be leaving for North Carolina next week for some really high-stress training, so the least he could do was relax.

And if he ferried Liv to her doctor's appointment he could find out how she was really doing…

Alex had another surprise for them when he and Liv finally emerged from Liv's room. From the twinkle in her eye and the soft rose satin nightgown she was wearing, she'd obviously put her evening to good use. "I called Elliot and told him you were taking the day off," she said firmly. "He told Don, and Don called here. I talked to him. Seems Elliot told him what happened yesterday and he ordered you to take the weekend off. So. You and I both have the entire weekend, and Ettienne told me Clayton issued orders for a three-day pass for everyone, so Clayton, you're taking Olivia to her doctor's appointment this morning and I am going to sleep in." She grinned cheerfully at Olivia's look as she put her empty coffee cup in the sink.

"Are you sleeping in or is Ettienne sleeping in you?" Olivia challenged bluntly.

Alex just grinned wider. "Probably a little of both. I don't think Ettienne is going to get a lot of sleep inside me, though. Actually, I think sleep is going to be the last thing on his mind at that point." She looked wickedly satisfied at Olivia's ruffled look. "Have fun with him. Oh, Clayton, Ettienne said we're going to stay home today so you can have the Hummer. His exact words were, if I remember correctly, 'time for you to see how much room is in the back'." She started to giggle as she escaped the kitchen and headed for her bedroom.

"It's a conspiracy, I swear," Olivia grumbled as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

"I'm not going to argue with it. Or with her." Clayton grinned as he reached for the handle of the cabinet that held the coffee mugs. "We don't get enough time together as it is, between my job and yours. And since I'm going to be gone for a month starting next week…"

Olivia studied him over the rim of her coffee cup. "I think I vaguely remember you saying something about that last night."

"Yeah." He leaned against the counter, taking a sip of his own coffee; black, and strong, just like he liked it. Olivia, he noticed, had added cream and sugar and he filed that information away for further reference. "I've been told to report to Fort Bragg next Wednesday for the SERE Level C course at Camp Mackall."

"SERE. Isn't that where Alex's manual came from?"

"Yes. It is. And I'll remind you, like I reminded her, that you signed a nondisclosure agreement concerning classified materials. The only reason I didn't rake Allie over the coals for giving it to Alex is because I think at some point Alex is going to go back to the DRC, if only for a visit to check on those kids she was so concerned about and that's going to come in handy. And also because neither of you look like the kind to flap lips."

She giggled. "That sounds funny coming from a military guy like you."

He put his coffee cup down and wrapped his arms around her. She put hers down after a moment and hugged him back, and for a few minutes they stood there enjoying the simple pleasure of just holding each other, a moment of peace in their otherwise hectic, busy days. "I'm going to be thinking about you every minute of the next month. Level C is supposed to be much harder than the basic level A I took almost fifteen years ago. C focuses on how to resist when captured by the enemy; it's structured around the supposition that we're already familiar with survival and evasion."

"Which you are." Olivia tilted her head to look at him. "But then again, you're familiar with a POW-type situation—what Velez and…and Sandra…did to us wasn't a cakewalk."

"I suspect they want me to take this course _because_ of what happened, thinking that if it happened once it could conceivably happen again. It's unlikely, but then again, being captured from a New York City apartment wasn't something I could have ever imagined happening either." He saw her guilty look. "Liv. Don't look like that. It wasn't your fault. I _chose_ to surrender rather than put you in danger; it was a command decision."

"Don't they tell you that you're never supposed to surrender?"

"Don't surrender until you know that 'further fighting would lead to the soldier's death with no significant loss to the enemy.' That's what the manual says. In our case, however, protecting the civilian—you—was more important. I could have escaped, but that would have left you alone in their hands. And you didn't have any training. Chances were very slim that you would survive or be able to escape if left alone in their hands, so I chose to stay with you."

"And you saved my life. I wouldn't have gotten out without you…no matter what that medal in the back of my bottom drawer means."

"Hey." Clayton drew her into another close hug. "Stop that. I wouldn't have gotten out without you, and you wouldn't have gotten out without me. It was a team effort. In SERE, that's what it's about; its about teamwork and mutual cooperation to survive. People who aren't team players don't usually do well during SERE training."

"Is it like getting graded on an exam, like passing the physical tests to enter Police Academy? If you get under a passing grade you have to do it again?"

He laughed at that. "Kind of, I guess, but there's not really a grade. In order to pass you have to complete the course—after the course concludes there's an R& R week where you're monitored by military shrinks to see if you came through okay, and the trainers/instructors debrief you, run down your mistakes and tell you what you should have done in this situation or could have done better in that situation. If you drop out it's considered a 'lack of motivation discharge' and it looks terrible on a soldier's record; it also means that soldier's commander is unlikely to send him to any more specialized training that will further his career, so it's essentially career suicide. The other way to fail is if you get caught—throughout the course there's a troop of other soldiers looking for you and if they catch you you flunk."

Olivia wrinkled her nose doubtfully. "It all sounds really macho to me. How many women do you get going through this?"

"Everyone has to take the Level A training. So there are a fair number. The Level C training, which is where I'm going, likely isn't going to have any women. Level C is only for personnel whose military operating specialty, position, assignment—like Rangers, Pathfinders, and Special Forces—or, in my case, seniority, means they'll be at greater risk for enemy exploitation. We were very, very lucky that Velez had tunnel vision for Alex; if he'd asked for something militarily classified and I couldn't give it to him, he could very well have tortured you to death and I would have had to let him because I can't let him have the stuff that's in my head. Not even for you." His eyes darkened as he considered the possibilities.

Olivia smiled gently as she ran a hand through his hair. "Well, it's didn't happen."

He shook himself out of his reverie. "No, it didn't, thank goodness. Dash knows at some point they're probably going to send him to Level C training after what happened to him and Alex, but Aliie won't have to. Women don't go through Level C. The Rangers—I was originally a Ranger—only accept women in 'support positions' so even though women do go into Ranger or Pathfinder school, they aren't likely to be in advance positions so they don't need to go through the same training. It's not mandatory for women like it is for the guys."

"Do they think women can't handle it?"

Clayton had to fight the smile. "Wait a minute. One minute you're upset at the thought of a woman going through this, then you're upset because they can't? You can't have it both ways, Liv."

Olivia rolled her eyes. "I can't imagine putting a woman through that, but if a woman chooses to take it, shouldn't she be allowed to? It's not like you get drafted into the Rangers or Pathfinders or whatever, you choose that career path so a woman should have the same options." She tossed back the last of her coffee, put the cup in the sink. "Come on. The military talk is fascinating but if we don't get moving we're going to be late for my appointment."


	4. Chapter 4: Arrival

**Chapter 4: Arrival**

_If a woman chooses to take it, shouldn't she be allowed to?_

Clayton was forcibly reminded of Olivia's words when he got off the transport at Fort Bragg a week later. Because there, getting off another transport that had gotten there just slightly ahead of his, was a woman.

Short, maybe five foot four or five, with a slender build, but he was willing to bet she had muscle in there somewhere by the way she hefted a pack on her back and a duffel along her side, both of which looked too large and heavy for her. She was wearing a regulation cover (Olivia would have called it a hat, his mind corrected, amused) but what he could see of her hair was dark. And when she turned around he got another surprise.

Asian.

Not completely Asian, he reassessed as he turned back to get his pack out of their transport. Her skin was the wrong color, and even though she had the almond-shaped Asian eyes, the rest of her features—he'd seen those high carved cheekbones on two of his own soldiers, Frank Talltree and Charlie IronKnife, and he knew that some part of her heritage must have come from a Native American tribe. It seemed like it would be an unusual mix, but he wasn't the kind of person who would look at a soldier's skin color. It was what was under the skin that mattered; what the soldier's character was, what skills they had that could be an asset, whether they were team players.

There were fourteen soldiers assembling here at Fort Bragg for transport to Camp Mackall, thirty-five miles away, and he knew the organizers of this August's SERE class would have decided to send all of them at once in one truck. The trainees were gathering in the open space in front of Fort Bragg's barracks, talking, introducing themselves.

A young man, mid twenties, with a light fuzz of carrot-red hair walked up to Hawk and held out his hand. "Hi."

Clayton took it with a smile. "Hi. Clayton Abernathy. They call me Hawk." He didn't want to mention his rank; a quick look at the assembled soldiers and he had the feeling he would be one of the most senior here, if not _the_ senior, even over the trainers and the base commander. And explaining his posting would also be problematic; while the official cover story was that he was posted at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, and Base Commander Colonel Michael Gold would answer in the affirmative if anyone not acquainted with the G.I. Joe classified project asked him about Clayton, he still didn't like lying, so he evaded mentioning it altogether.

"Ken Ryder. They call me Red Ryder. Ranger." With that red hair, his nickname was self-explanatory.

Another man walked up behind Ken and clapped him on the shoulder; tall, with espresso skin and dark eyes. "Making friends, aren't we?" He looked Clayton over and raised an eyebrow. "You are?"

"Clayton Abernathy. They call me Hawk."

The new guy held out a hand. "Shawn Miller. They call me Demolition, or just Demo, because I'm good at blowing things up. I'm also a Ranger." He grinned as another man came up. "This here's Marco Blasetti. We call him Mark because no one can beat him while shooting. He's part of our Ranger squad."

"Hi. Clayton Abernathy. I'm called Hawk."

"Soldiers! Fall in!" came a shout, and a moment later the person who had shouted came up. Ryder, Demo and Mark moved out of the way so that this new guy could meet Hawk; Hawk knew instinctively that this guy had natural command presence when he marched up to him and held out a hand. "Nicholas Warren. They call me White Knight, or just Knight. US Army Rangers. Actually, most of us here are Rangers. It seems like a mostly-Ranger class."

"Former Ranger." Hawk ventured. "I'm currently on assignment with another government project but I started out with the Rangers."

"Great! So we actually are all Rangers. Except maybe the chickie over there." He pointed to the young woman, who was digging around in her pack, seemingly trying to rearrange the load. Demo jog-trotted across the space to help her, and at his greeting, her face broke into a brilliant smile, one that transformed her strong features into something…well, she'd never be called pretty, but there was something else there that made you want to look again.

Knight strode over to Demo, and Ryder, Mark, and Hawk followed; Clayton because he was curious and wanted to meet her. Knight got there first, and Clayton heard him say, loudly enough that everyone currently in the immediate vicinity could hear, "Another chickie trying to grow some balls?" Hawk stiffened in outrage at the rudeness, but refrained from saying anything; it wasn't his fight, and he wanted to see how the woman would handle this.

The expression on her face never changed as she rose gracefully from the ground and stood facing Knight, tilting her head backward to look up at him, seemingly unfazed by the height difference. "No thanks, I'm perfectly happy being female." Her voice was level and even, with no sign if the irritation Hawk was feeling at Knight's rude introduction.

"What are you, like twelve?" From his full height of about six three White Knight towered over the young woman.

"What are you, like forty?" her tone and inflection was a perfect mimic of Knight's own; around them, the other Rangers broke into chuckles, and Knight glared at her for a moment, tightly, then he snapped, "Ryder, Demo, Mark. Come on."

Demo had her pack in his hands and was working at the zipper, which appeared to be stuck; at Knight's command, he looked uncertain, then handed it back to her. With a muttered 'sorry', he hurried after Knight, Ryder and Mark.

Hawk watched them all go. Knight had natural leadership presence, and the others followed him even when they didn't want to. He filed that away for future reference and turned back to the woman.

If he'd looked a moment later he would have seen only a smooth impassive mask. But in that brief instant before she locked down her emotions he saw hurt and a measure of loneliness there, and when she smiled at him, there was a hint of uncertainty in it, a feeling that she was going to be cautious because she didn't know how he was going to react. "Cameron Arlington. Polaris."

"Clayton Abernathy. Hawk." He took the pack from her, surprised at how much it actually weighed, and put it down on the ground, dropping to one knee as he fought with the recalcitrant zipper. "Polaris is the name for the north star, right?"

"Yes," and she dropped to her knees beside him. "The largest star of the Big Dipper, the indicator of true north. My commander tagged me with it because my primary MOS is navigation—I can navigate through anything. He sponsored me into Ranger School and once I pass this I'll be assigned to the 75th Rangers, the Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment."

"Wow." The 75th RRD was _the_ elite Ranger regiment for the US Army. "But…the Rangers don't let women in."

She laughed. "Right now they don't. I'm content to work support; if I work hard and blow them out of the water eventually they'll have to admit a girl can be just as good as The Guys and maybe they'll change their mind. I was the equal of everyone in my class at hunting, tracking, and unfamiliar terrain navigation."

"I'll bet your Native American heritage helped with that."

She looked at him in astonishment. "How did you know that? Most people look at me and see the Korean side of my heritage."

"There are a couple of Native Americans on my base. Charlie IronKnife and Frank Talltree are from the Southwest tribes and I see some of the same facial structure and skin color on them in you." The zipper finally came unstuck and he wiggled it a bit to close it, then handed it back to her. "Here you are, all fixed." Then he saw what was sticking out of the pack. "Is that…a sword?"

She grinned. "Twin blade baton, actually." She put her pack down, took the long cylinder out of the pack, then pulled on it from each end to reveal the twin blades that fitted into each others' hilts. The weapons looked well-used and well-cared for, and he had to wonder what she did with them that would put that kind of wear on antiquated weapons. Snake Eyes' swords looked like that, but…well, he was Snake Eyes, they were part of him. "I've never gotten any formal training, but I can defend myself with them if I have to."

Hawk grinned. "I got a woman soldier good with swords at my base. I always take care not to get her pissed off at me."

_That_ she apparently understood, and she laughed as she sheathed the swords, thrust the now harmless-looking baton into her pack. "If it makes you feel any better, I've never actively threatened anyone with it. Self-defense a couple of times but never offensively."

And at that moment the base commander's voice rang out over the arrival ground. "SERE students, fall in!"

Military discipline reigned and moments later there was a straight line of eighteen SERE students standing at attention. Clayton stood at one end; those that had come in groups, like Knight, Demo, Ryder and Mark grouped themselves in the middle. He noticed that Polaris was standing with a group of three on the other end of the line. Correction; she was standing near them but not 'with' them; there were subtle clues in their body language that effectively shut her out.

_Looks like Knight isn't the only one who has a problem with women in Ranger school_, Hawk thought, and listened closely as the other three members of her training cadre named themselves as David Harper, aka Jammer, Communication Specialist; Tony Walker, aka Pioneer , demolition target analysis, and Anthony Valverde, aka Airwalk, military free fall operations. Cam stepped forward, last in line, announced her name as Cameron Arlington, aka Polaris, primary MOS as field recon and unfamiliar terrain navigation, secondary MOS as first aid and emergency medical training.

Hawk wasn't familiar with the others but he did know Tony Walker. Part of the 75th Ranger Regiment was devoted to a tactical Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment, which was organized into three teams of four each; Tony Walker had a good standing record and had been recommended for the Joes special project. Hawk had seen his file, had been impressed with his service record and had been considering adding the guy to the team.

But looking at the way he was pointedly excluding an assigned member of his team didn't bode well for his chances. Hawk knew it wasn't fair to base his entire assessment of the man on just this quick observation of him, but first and foremost Hawk picked soldiers who were team players, who would obey any orders given them and would treat everyone the same, and right now looking at the way he was shutting one of his own team members out—if he tried that at Joe base Allie would hand him his head during training and Scarlett would hand him his balls. On a silver platter. With garnish.

Introductions over, everyone knew the names of the other fourteen people who would be going through the SERE training for the next month with them, and they were all told to pile into the covered truck that would transport them to Camp Mackall for the next four weeks. Clayton maneuvered his way through the crowd until he got to Tony Walker's detachment, then got into the truck right after the man so he could sit beside him. "Hey. Clayton Abernathy."

"I know, I heard you. Former Ranger, now at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. Cushy assignment." Walker shook Clayton's hand.

"Not really, though it has its moments," Clayton said, involuntarily remembering his stay at Villa Velez in Columbia a couple months before. "You're RRD?"

"Yep. Detachment Two, Team Leader. Jammer's our communications specialist, Airwalk's our Freefall Ops specialist, and Arlington's been assigned as our navigator and long range reconnaissance specialist." He leaned in close to Hawk as if to speak confidentially, but there was no way Polaris, sitting on the other side of Hawk, could have missed hearing his next words. "Base Commander Dixon only assigned her to us because she's half-Indian and they're traditionally good at tracking and navigation. I betcha she's never even been out in the field. He's just trying to make it hard for me to get the posting I requested."

"Really? Where is that?"

"Some classified project the military has called G.I. Joe. They only take the best. I know I'm the best the Rangers have and I want that post, and I'm not going to let an affirmative-action ass-kissing chick get in my way."

Hawk had just about enough of Walker. His chances of getting into the Joes had dropped dramatically in the last minute or so, unbeknownst to him. "No commander assigns someone whose abilities they aren't sure of, so he must feel that Polaris has a valuable contribution to make to your team." He felt Cam stiffen next to him, felt her eyes staring at him, and steadfastly ignored her as he fixed Tony Walker with the penetrating glare that had become part of Hawk's legend around Joe base.

The guy didn't get it. "Well, she can make those contributions to someone else's team, not mine. As soon as this training's over I'm going to the Joes and she's going to go somewhere else. I don't care where." No, he really didn't get the point Hawk was trying to make.

"Don't like women in the military?" Knight chimed in from where he sat on the other side of the truck from Pioneer.

Pioneer shook his head. "Women shouldn't be soldiers. They're too weak and stupid. They aren't aggressive enough and they don't have the fortitude to be soldiers and anyone who thinks otherwise has never served with one. I picked the Rangers because I'm the best at those skills and because they didn't have any silly girls, and now here they are sticking me with one."

Hawk took a quick glance sideways, and saw Cam's face, shuttered and expressionless. What they'd said had to hurt, but she wasn't about to say anything—and his respect for her rose a notch.

"Hey. Dude. Chill," Demo said, loud enough for all of them to hear. "Let's just get there and get through this training, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Pioneer subsided.

Hawk thought the conversation over as he sat back and closed his eyes, not paying much attention as the conversation drifted on to other topics (fortunately not involving Polaris, and all women by extension, and their role in the military.) Walker could kiss the Joes goodbye; there was no way he was even setting foot on Joe base, not after what Hawk had just heard. One of the important parts of being a team player was to put aside your personal feelings for the good of the team, and while liking your team members and being friends with them was important, if it really came down to it you didn't have to _like_ the person, you just had to work with them, and Walker was apparently not getting that.

And aside from that, Hawk could imagine a handful of scenarios at Joe base involving Lady Jaye, Scarlett, and Cover Girl meeting up with Pioneer's attitude, and none of those scenarios were going to end well…for Pioneer.

Not to mention what Flint, Snake Eyes, and Beach Head would think of to say to Pioneer when word got out of what he'd said about and to the three ladies in question.

And what those three ladies would say to Hawk himself. Particularly Scarlett. No matter how many stars you had on your shoulder epaulets, no man in his right mind would piss off a woman as good with a sword—and other sharp pointed objects—as Shana O'Hara.

On the other hand, Lady Jaye, Scarlett, and Cover Girl were always telling him the base could use more women. And granted, there weren't many 'exceptional' women in the military, not in the way that Allie, Shana, and Courtney were 'exceptional'…but if Cam Arlington's Base Commander Dixon had seen fit to not only allow her into Ranger school, but also to assign her to an RRD and sponsor her into this Level C SERE training, he had to have a very high opinion of her abilities indeed.

Hawk would have to see how she did on this training.


	5. Chapter 5: Camp Mackall

**Chapter 5: Camp Mackall**

"Atten-TION!"

The fourteen SERE students snapped to attention as Base Commander Frederick Hilton came to a stop in front of them. "Welcome to Camp Mackall and the JFK Special Warfare Center. Since those of you standing in front of me have already completed SERE Level A training, you already know what the survival and evasion course entails. You have already been here at least once in your military careers, learning to obtain and prepare food, find water, and perform basic first-aid out in the field as well as techniques for maintaining personal hygiene in poor sanitation environments.

"What this level of the training concentrates on is developing mental toughness to withstand incarceration by a hostile force. If you do not already know the Code of Conduct by heart you will learn it quickly. Level C training also covers some of the legal aspects of The Code in relation to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and to International law. We will teach you how to defeat enemy interrogation. We will teach you how to organize and operate a chain of command in a POW situation, how to maintain covert communication and group dynamics in a hostile environment, how to plan and execute an escape.

"However, we can teach you all we can but it is up to you to _learn_ what we are trying to tell you. If you are ever unlucky enough to be in a capture situation, you are immediately going to be the object of intense scrutiny as the enemy attempts to obtain information. As members of the US military who will be operating in front of the forward line of troops, it is up to you to resist, to ensure that your value as their captive decreases, to make you appear an inadvisable and unattractive target. For some of you that will simply not be possible; you must therefore concentrate on resisting attempts levied on you through the medium of mental and physical duress.

"Our first order of operation will be to split you into teams. All of you standing here will be assigned to one of three evasion teams; for the remainder of your time here you will eat, sleep, live, work and survive with that team. Due to the unequal number of personnel here, there will be two teams of five each and one team of four, and every effort has been made to try and keep individuals from the same base together. So Team A will be Harper, Walker, Valverde, Arlington. Team B will be Ryder, Miller, Blasetti, Warren, Abernathy. Team C will be Stanton, Locke, Lewis, Johnson, and Robinson." He put the paper down as Walker raised a hand. "Got a problem, Walker?"

"Sir! Request reassignment Sir!"

Hilton looked at him as if he didn't quite believe him. "What did you say, Team Leader?"

"Sir! Request reassignment!"

"This is your team, Team Leader."

"Permission to speak freely, Sir!"

The base commander folded his arms. "Go ahead."

"Sir! My current team assignment does not present an opportunity for a fair assessment of my abilities Sir!"

"And why would that be, Ranger?"

"Out in the field my team would not be hampered with a female handicap Sir!"

Hawk felt his jaw drop open; around him he could see a couple of the others doing the same.

"Explain female handicap, Ranger."

"Sir. Base Commander Dixon assigned Cam Arlington to my detachment even though she will never be assigned forward of the forward line of troops. I will never have to face a capture situation with a woman on my team; and having a woman decreases my team's chances of successful completion of this training, Sir."

"Cameron Arlington? Cameron is traditionally a boy's name…" Hilton strode to the end of the line where Cam stood, at attention, spine stiff, and yanked her cover off. Underneath Clayton saw two thick braids of dark blue-black hair wound around Cam's head, keeping it off the collar as per military regulation.

_How could he not know she was female?_ Clayton thought disbelievingly. _Didn't he study all the personnel folders sent to him? Even if it was just for a training exercise?_ Clayton himself did—and did an annual review so that if any of his soldiers' next-of-kin contacts had changed he would know.

"Explain yourself, Arlington. Women are not traditionally sent through, nor volunteer for, Level C training!"

Her voice was tight with tension. "Base Commander Dixon recommended I take this training Sir!"

"I will have a talk with Base Commander Dixon. I don't know what he was thinking. Step out of line, Arlington. You're going back."

"Sir! I need to complete this training if I want to complete Ranger School Sir!" There was an edge to her voice.

"Women have no business being Rangers," said one of the instructors standing behind the Base Commander. "I have to say I concur with Team Leader Walker. A team with a woman on it has a lot more options for exploitation than a team of men, that's why women aren't put in front of the forward line of troops. The human male's instinctive need to protect the female of the species leave an entire team open to unique vulnerabilities. And no female will be able to withstand the rigors of a POW camp and military interrogation."

Hawk couldn't stand it anymore; he stepped forward. "Permission to speak, Sir!" Even though he was the ranking officer here and didn't—technically—have to ask permission from anyone.

"Go ahead." Base Commander Hilton nodded to him.

"Ranger Arlington's commanding officer would not have sent her here unless he had every confidence in her ability. And it has been my experience that an ability to withstand hardship is not exclusive to the male gender." His mind flashed back briefly to Alex, lying barely alive in his infirmary after being tortured by a Congolese rogue army general; and Olivia, pumped full of illegal drugs, still stubbornly refusing to tell Velez where Alexandra Cabot was. "While I understand that a team with a woman on it has some unique vulnerabilities, the abilities that the woman herself brings to the team she is assigned on can balance the equation." Olivia's words flashed through his mind, and he found himself echoing it. "If she wants to take the course she should be allowed to."

"The course requires that an individual work with a team. If the team she is assigned to does not want to work with her, and I can see how forcing them to do so would present an unfair handicap, I have no choice but to pull her from the course." He turned to Arlington. "If you indeed wish to take the course and complete your Ranger training—and I cannot see why since even though you have the training you will never have to use it, so this is a waste of your time and ours—but if you insist on taking the course we will notify your Base Commander when an adequate number of female participants are available for you to form a team and complete the training."

"Sir! That could take months!" Cam protested.

"If no one here wishes to work with you, you do not have an alternative, Arlington!" Base Commander Hilton's voice had acquired a hard edge.

"I will work with her." The words were out of Clayton's mouth before he even realized he'd made up his mind to speak.

Hilton stared at Clayton like he'd grown a second head.

"I will work with her," Clayton repeated firmly even as he wondered what the hell he was doing. "Ranger Arlington is no different from any other soldier and should be treated as such, whatever her gender. The instructor may be right in saying that 'the human male's instinctive need to protect the weaker female of the species leave an entire team open to unique vulnerabilities' but that's only if the human male in question sees her as weak. I don't see someone weak. I see a soldier who has gone through the same training that we did, who wants to complete the course as much as we do, and who should have the same rights as every other soldier here. I see a soldier who apparently is so superlative in her accomplishments that her commander sent her here to further her training because she has earned that right. And on the strength of his recommendation and the trust he has placed in her abilities I am willing to work with her."

The base commander stared at both Clayton and at Cam for a long time. Then he turned to the rest of the students, standing there. "There needs to be a minimum of four people to a team for her to complete the course. I will take volunteers."

Demo took a step out of line. "I will work with her. I've heard her reputation in the 75th and I agree with Abernathy that she could bring a lot to the team she's on."

David Harper stepped out of the line beside Walker, ignoring his Team Leader's hissed 'get back in line!' "I'll work with her," he said, "I've had the privilege of working with her throughout the training and she is far and away the best Ranger in our class."

Base Commander Hilton sighed. "All right. We have our team of four. You are now the—"

"Wait." The instructor who had said that women couldn't withstand an interrogation stepped forward; Broadview, read the name patch on his fatigues. Colonel Broadview. "Let's lay down some rules. If she drops out, the entire team fails. And since the objective of the entire SERE training course is to apply maximum combat realism to these tactical exercises, the chances of her dropping out are quite high indeed. Make sure you're okay with this; and remember the lack of honor in failing this course."

David Harper showed a moment of indecision; he looked at Cam, standing straight and stiff, eyes front. Then he looked at Walker. And then he stepped back into line beside his team leader.

_Son of a bitch_, Clayton thought, and squared his shoulders, turned his eyes to the front, and planted his feet. _Made a decision and then went back on it when he heard the consequences._ _And after that little speech about being in training with her and knowing she was the best._

Well, Clayton wasn't going anywhere. He'd taken a stand on this and he was damn well going to keep it. If it had been Courtney standing there instead of Arlington, she would have been spitting curses; Arlington was responding by going quiet and still; he wondered what was going through her head at the moment. If no one else stepped forward to replace Harper, Cam was still not going to be able to take the course…

And then Ken Ryder stepped forward. Didn't say anything. Didn't look at anyone. Just took one step forward and stopped.

"All right." The Base Commander looked at his list. "Team A now needs an extra member, so Walker, you're the team leader over Harper, Valverde, Stanton and Johnson. Team B is Abernathy as team leader, Arlington, Miller, Ryder. Team C is Warren as team leader, Blasetti, Locke, Lewis and Robinson. Anyone have any other complaints?" He already looked annoyed, so it was not surprising that no one had anything to say this time.

"There are barracks over there, fifteen beds to one, so you should all fit. Arlington. There are barracks for the women who go through Level A training on the other side of the camp. You'll have to sleep there instead of with your team. Now, all of you, get settled in, go to chow, roll in and get some sleep. Be in the briefing room and ready at 0900 tomorrow morning to commence training." The man turned on his heel and left. The instructors went with him; the last one to leave was Colonel Broadview, and Hawk didn't like the look in the man's eyes when he looked at Cam. Speculative, almost… calculating.

"All right, fall out, let's drop our gear and go grab some chow," Hawk said cheerfully as he hefted his pack. Miller and Ryder headed for the indicated barracks, but Arlington was still frozen. "You know where the women's barracks are, Cam—Polaris?" Clayton went back to her side, grabbing her duffel bag by the strap and handing it to her.

"I…you…" she sounded stunned as she took her pack from him. "Why would you do that for me?"

"I work with women. I have three of them on my base. They have, by and large, turned into assets rather than liabilities. And, while I've never met Base Commander Shelton Dixon in person, I have heard of him and I am positive that he would not have recommended you come here to face this if he wasn't absolutely sure you could handle it." He started to walk away, then stepped back to her side and lowered his voice. "Not that long ago I sent a team on a mission to escort a civilian through hostile territory to do her job. She, along with one of my soldiers, was captured and tortured—I still don't know how she stayed alive, but she did and she recovered and because of her I have the utmost respect and admiration for the female of our species." He cracked a smile. "Not to mention which, the woman who trains half my base in hand-to-hand combat is also an expert with a crossbow and would pin my balls to the wall if I so much as _hinted_ that she couldn't handle herself."

That finally cracked Arlington's shell, and she gave him a crooked half-smile as she shouldered her duffel bag. "I won't disappoint you, Sir," she said as she headed for the women's barracks in the opposite direction.

Clayton stepped into the men's barracks and stopped. Demo and Ryder were putting their packs in the footlockers at the end of their beds, but what caught his attention was the amount of space between his team and the others. There were sixteen beds in the barracks, eight on either side of the long open room. Knight had his five guys at the end of the barracks on the left; Walker had his five guys on the right. Demo and Ryder had picked the two beds on the end and were studiously ignoring the two-bed gap between themselves and the rest of the SERE trainees.

Hawk strolled calmly in and sat his pack on the bed next to Ryder's, opening his footlocker and beginning to stow his things in it. Knight and his team got up silently and walked out without a word; a moment later, Pioneer did the same with his team, leaving the three men alone in the barracks.

"They're going to give us the silent treatment for the rest of the month," Ryder broke the silence first.

Clayton stopped unpacking and gave his team his full attention. "I know. Look, if either of you have any second thoughts about your choice, let me know and I'll speak to the instructors for you."

Demo shook his head emphatically; on the bed opposite, Ryder was doing the same. "Uh uh." Ryder said stubbornly. "If one of us backs out she can't take the course because she won't have a team. And if she doesn't take this course she can't complete Ranger school. She may not be a Ranger in name because women can't be Rangers, but she'll be performing all the duties of one and eventually someone higher than Base Commander Dixon's gonna have to see that and recognize that."

Demo hesitated, then said slowly, "I'm not backing out. You were right, Hawk, if she wants to take it she should be able to, and it's not fair to make her wait until they have four women—she's right that that could take months, or even years. She's fully aware that coming here meant she would be grubbing in the dirt and sleeping on the ground with a handful of guys and she still chose to come, so she knows what she's in for. I understand that if she chooses to drop out we're all going to fail, but she doesn't strike me as the quitting type."

Ryder looked at Clayton. "I don't know if she's going to have a choice. Did you see the way that instructor Broadview was looking at her? He doesn't think she should be in Ranger school or Level C training and he's going to make this as difficult as possible so she'll drop out."

"I saw that too." Clayton said. "All right, we've all been through SERE-A. We know SERE-C is harder and the resistance part is more intense, but I will tell you if something happens that shouldn't I'm going to be all over Broadview." His hard expression left no doubt that he meant what he said. "In the meantime—are both of you going to be able to live with your squad mates' hostility for the rest of this month, and even possibly afterwards when you get back to your base?"

Ryder shrugged. "I decided on the way here that I want to be an aviator, not a Ranger, so when I get back I'm asking for assignment to an airborne wing. It won't matter to me."

Demo said honestly, "Mark was my best friend before this happened. If he's really a friend he'll respect that I felt strongly enough about something and took a stand to defend it. If he doesn't understand that, well, then, I guess he's not really a friend."

Hawk had to admire the guts it took to say that.


	6. Chapter 6: Class

**Chapter 6: Class**

By the next morning it was clear that, as far as the other two teams were concerned, avoidance was going to be the approach they were going to take to Hawk's group.

The mess hall went conspicuously silent when she walked in the next morning; Hawk hadn't seen her at chow the night before. He'd thought about asking her about the missed meal, but decided against it; she had to have a lot of mixed emotions about what had happened and he figured she'd need some time to sort it out and come to grips with what had been decided. But she strode into the mess hall the next morning, face impassive, and when the entire mess hall went silent at her entrance—not only the SERE students, but also the rest of Company A stationed here at Camp Mackall—she simply walked past them and approached the table at which Hawk and Demo and Ryder sat. "This seat taken?" she cracked a smile, and Ryder smiled back as he slid over on the bench to make room for her. Not that he really had to; the rest of the students had conspicuously isolated Hawk's team at their own table, although Pioneer's and Knight's teams sat together at another table and there was no distance between them. Ryder's gesture was meant to make a point of including her, a subtle 'in-your-face' to the rest of the people in the mess hall. Hawk was slightly amused by the gesture; apparently this soldier didn't do things by halves. He might have been the last to commit, but once he'd made the decision he damn well was going to stick by it.

The 'classroom' where they were going to spend the majority of their first week here was actually a former camp briefing room, now obviously converted over to a SERE training room. There were photos of some of the native North Carolina wildlife and plants, showing which ones were edible forage and which was not; Hawk remembered from the last time he'd taken the course that a lot of the plants that were edible had lookalikes that were not, and it took experience to recognize the two. The room was set up like a lecture hall, with chairs arranged in a semicircle around a podium and a small raised stage, and the chairs had small tabletops that could be rotated over the lap of the one sitting in the chair to be written on. Polaris dropped her pack beside one of the desks, took out a notebook and pen, put it on the tabletop, then went over to study the photos and monographs of edible plants as the rest of the SERE students filed in and took their seats—again, leaving a conspicuous amount of space between their teams and Hawk's. Clayton knew he was going to be damned sick and tired of this by the time the month was over, but he had no thoughts of quitting or giving up; he was committed to this, and from the looks he saw Ryder and Demo exchanging, he knew they were committed too, by the way both men's jaws set in determination.

Although there was a survival and evasion portion to this course that would take up the next week, it was assumed that everyone currently sitting here had taken SERE-A, which emphasized survival and evasion. SERE-C was going to focus on the resistance portion. Clayton leaned over to whisper to Demo, "How long has it been since you took SERE-A?"

"A year ago," Demo said. "I think I still remember a lot of what they taught us about survival."

Ryder, on Hawk's other side, held up one finger. "A year ago for me too. How long ago did you take it?"

"Too long," Hawk said ruefully, hoping to avoid answering that question directly. Everyone else in this class was in their mid-twenties to early thirties, just starting out in their military careers; here he was, a two-star General, and the last time he'd taken the SERE-A course was almost sixteen years ago! He didn't really want to tell these kids that.

He was spared any further questions by the appearance of the instructor—unfortunately, not the Colonel Broadview who'd taken such an instant dislike to Polaris. And that was 'unfortunately' because instructors for the classroom portions didn't go out into the field, and vice versa. Clayton hoped that Colonel Broadview was the instructor for the field exercises, the survival and escape portions, because if Broadview was the instructor for the RTL—the Resistance Training Laboratory—Polaris was going to have a horrible time of that last week.

But at least it was only going to be a week, not like Olivia and Clayton's two weeks as Velez's guests in Colombia, and there were some things that the instructors couldn't do, so Polaris's ordeal wasn't going to be anything like Alex's almost non-stop three-day torture. At this point Hawk didn't want to even speculate what the RTL was going to be like for his team; best to just wait until it happened and deal with it then. He watched as Polaris slid into her seat, then faced front and paid attention to the instructor.

"Good morning," the instructor said, then without further preamble, he launched into speech. "I am Sergeant Halloran. You will address me as Sergeant or Sergeant Halloran if you should have any questions. Are we understood?" Nods all around; Pioneer and Knight nodded too, but they looked faintly bored and Pioneer was toying with his pen. Apparently he's expecting this to be a cakewalk, Hawk thought with disgust. Well the more fool him for thinking that and not paying attention. And he focused on Sergeant Halloran.

"The first thing you're going to learn in SERE-C is the POW's code of conduct. It is important that you learn it. Memorize it, learn it so thoroughly that you can recite it in your sleep. This Code of Conduct will govern you every minute of your POW experience, and strict adherence to both the letter of the Code and the spirit of the Code will help you return to your country with your honor intact. I have written on the board the Code of Conduct. I will read it and you will repeat after me."

Clayton repeated after Sergeant Halloran, committing the words to his memory, as he was no doubt sure that Ryder, Demo, and Polaris were doing. Polaris was squinting hard at the board, as if taking a photograph of the way the board looked; he wondered if she was one of those with a photographic memory. "I am American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense."

Sergeant Halloran had them repeat it three times, either not noticing or pretending to ignore the rolled-eye looks Pioneer was giving the ceiling at this (to him) monotonous repetition. Then he went on to the second article of the code. "I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist."

Clayton was forcibly reminded of what he'd said to Olivia the last time he'd seen her before he left. The thought of Olivia brought a slight smile to his face, and he ducked his head to hide it lest it be mistaken for inappropriate humor. Around him, the voices of the other SERE-C students droned on, most of their voices simply a murmur except for one voice, a clear but slightly husky contralto. Polaris.

"If I am captured I will resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy."

To these kids, these were words. For Hawk, though…he remembered just how Alex Cabot had looked when she came into his base, wearing half the blood in her body soaked into the fabric of the fatigues they'd painfully dressed her in because she had no clothing left. There had been barely a single square inch of her skin that hadn't been bruised, cut, scraped, or bleeding, and he wondered; if she had been capable of realizing it, and if the rogue Colonel Zimurinda back there in the DRC had offered it, would she have accepted the offer of cessation of her pain? He wondered if she had, but she'd never spoken to anyone about what had actually happened inside the hut away from Flint's watchful eyes as he waited, a fellow captive but not their target.

"If I become a prisoner of war I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and I will back them in every way."

That part Clayton had a hard time with. When a civilian's life was in the balance, as Olivia's had been, and Velez had asked him for the communication code to Joe base, Clayton had known that those codes not only went to Joe base but they also went to every classified base in the US. And so he'd settled for a compromise; he hadn't given Velez the communication codes, but he'd set up a communication line to base because if he hadn't…he still remembered Olivia screaming and twitching under a taser attack. He couldn't give the codes, but yet, withholding them was harming Olivia. He'd just been lucky that Velez hadn't wanted any of the other classified military information in his head; his only goal in capturing Olivia—and Clayton, by accident—was to get at the object of his obsessive dark fantasies; Alex Cabot. No that that fact had made any difference in Clayton's and Olivia's captivity; they'd still been hurt simply because Velez and his accomplice Sandra Velasquez had wanted to.

And that was something this Resistance Training Lab didn't cover; what if the enemy capturing you didn't want information, could care less what you told them, they just wanted to make you hurt? He remembered what Flint had told him of seeing Alex being beaten by the rogue militia leader; she'd refused to scream, refused to cry, refused to make a sound until she absolutely had to, just because that was what he wanted and, as Flint had put it, 'She'd be damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry until she absolutely had to.' But now Clayton wondered if the beating would have gone on as long if she'd cried and screamed. And Flint had told him that Alex had taunted the warlord, something that they were told in SERE-A that they should never do—taunting the enemy made them even angrier and would open you up to more hurt. Granted, Alex Cabot hadn't had the luxury of this training, and she had been deliberately trying to get them to exhaust themselves on her; it was why when they came back she was in a coma and Flint had had a bad infection for a horribly painful but ultimately superficial whipping.

" When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause."

Another problem. If the enemy wanted to use you as a propaganda prop, it didn't matter what you had written or hadn't, what you had said or hadn't. Hell, with video and sound editing equipment the way it was these days, you could practically piece together an entire fabricated conversation from bits of words and syllables from an interrogation and it could make you sound like you'd said something you hadn't. The Geneva Convention only protected you as long as you hadn't turned traitor to your country; if they could prove you had (like with one of these faked pieced-together testimonies) you were no longer protected under the Convention's terms and were therefore now subject to the worst that man could devise. And, as he'd seen in Alex's case so graphically, man could be absolutely, brutally inhuman to a fellow human being if it suited their purpose. There were sophisticated audio equipment that could figure out that a testimony was faked, but if the video or taped testimony was grainy or of poor quality, who knew how long that could take. And in the meantime…

"I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles that made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America."

If he hadn't been sitting in the desk in front of her and he hadn't had one ear peeled for her husky contralto, he might not have heard it. But he did catch it; Polaris's voice dropped on the word 'God'. And it caught him by such surprise that he forgot to repeat the rest of the Code.

He wasn't a really religious man himself, but he did believe in God and America. From the sound of her voice, it hadn't been the country; it had been the mention of God that had thrown her off.

And then he remembered that she was Native American—well, halfway, at least. Never mind the fact that to a surface look she was Asian; anyone who really looked could see the cinnamon-honey hue of her skin, and the chiseled, planed features so distinctive to the Native American tribes.

_So maybe she doesn't believe in God. Hmm_. One of the parts of the Resistance training was the portion where their 'captors' desecrated the American flag, burned it, kicked the Bible around. He had to fight the smile; she'd be completely unimpressed and immune to that particular psychological ploy. He didn't remember completely, but he didn't remember having the Joes' library stocked with Native American mysticism—simply because there wasn't any. Most of them, if he remembered correctly, had converted to the 'white man's religion', and as Frank Talltree had explained to him once, the Native Americans had been persecuted for so long and subject to so much of the white man's brainwashing that they kept their old faith only through oral tradition. There wasn't a lot of written material about their old belief systems out there.

He resolved to ask her as soon as he had the opportunity what tribe she'd come from. He didn't want to ask her straight out what her belief system was; she already had enough vulnerabilities going into this course for him to add more ammo to the instructors' weapons, and also because it was certainly none of his damn business. He didn't care what his soldiers believed in as long as those beliefs kept them going. With difficulty, he wrenched his attention back to the instructor.

"…and so even though some of us may be female, the terms 'fighting man' apply to all of you equally. You are all expected to uphold and abide by the Code while under POW conditions, and there are no exceptions to that rule. The first rule of the US armed forces is honor, and while outside the Forces 'honor' is a seldom-used word and even less understood, you are expected to know what it is and to abide by it."

Hawk waited until the rest of the SERE students had left the room on the way to the mess hall for lunch before he approached Polaris. He'd caught her eye toward the end of class and tipped his head slightly; she, picking up on the subtle cue that he wanted to talk to her, stayed behind, fiddling with her backpack until the rest of the classroom emptied and they were the only ones left.

"You wanted to speak to me, Sir?" She tilted her head slightly, waiting for him to say something.

"What tribe are you from?" He asked her as he gathered his own pack. "Just curious. You kind of don't look like Frank or Charlie."

She studied him for a moment, then said abruptly, "Are you asking because you really want to know, or are you asking because you heard me not say 'God' and you want to know what my religion is but it's against military rules to ask that question?"

He stared at her, completely nonplussed.

"It was rather obvious," she said dryly. "I knew you'd heard me because I saw you go stiff, just for a minute. You were surprised. So surprised you didn't repeat the last line of the Code."

Allie would have picked up on that. So would Shana and Courtney. And Olivia and Alex. So she was perceptive too. "Um, both, I guess," he said finally.

She sighed. "I know I'm just asking for trouble with this, but I owe you one. So. I'm Iroquois, Seneca tribe, Wolf clan, and my next of kin are living on the Cattaraugus County Reservation in upstate New York, where I lived from the time I was eighteen until I was twenty-three. I know I look young, but I am twenty-five." She took a quick look around, then pulled open the top of her fatigue top.

Hanging around her neck was a military issue pentagram.

"You're—"

"I know, I know. Native American and pagan. I've heard it all before." She yanked her fatigue top closed almost angrily and shouldered her pack. "Just…do me a favor and don't tell Ryder or Demo. I know they're going to find out eventually anyway but I'd rather not lose their respect until I have to." As she strode off she tossed over her shoulder, "It's bad enough I've just lost yours. But you were the one who asked, and I owed you the truth."


	7. Chapter 7: Fight

**Chapter 7: Fight**

She didn't speak to him for the rest of the afternoon; not that they had a chance. The afternoon was taken up with learning the legal codes involved with prisoner of war situations, both peacetime and wartime, US military code as well as International code. He took lots of notes on this portion, vaguely thinking he could give them to Alex Cabot when he got back to base, if she'd decided by then to keep on with her 'boring' prosecutor's job or if she would take Lieutenant General Johnson's offer to sponsor her into the JAG office.

He was mentally exhausted by the time the afternoon wrapped up and they were dismissed to go to evening chow, but once over and they were told they had some free time he couldn't relax. The truncated conversation he'd had with Polaris that afternoon was bothering him and after re-reading his first page of notes for the third time without absorbing the tiniest sense of their meaning, he decided to go find Polaris.

In early August it didn't get dark until after nineteen hundred (seven o'clock civilian time) so there was still enough daylight for him to see that she wasn't on the basketball courts with the other trainees. Not that he was surprised; if he'd been treated the way she'd been he wouldn't have been inclined to play games with them either.

She wasn't in the women's barracks either, to his surprise; when he poked his head in (after a cautious tap to make sure she knew he was coming in before he actually went in) the room was empty. He almost couldn't tell which bed was hers (all of them were neatly made) until he saw the footlocker at the end of one bed had a hefty lock on it. Military issue. It must have been given to her by her Base Commander and she'd brought it with her because none of them had been given these locks. And as he closed the door he wondered about that lock. There must have been some instances of people getting into her things for her to have gotten that lock, and those instances must have been numerous enough that the base commander had noticed. Which meant she probably was used to the sexism currently being displayed by the rest of her training cadre.

He knew it was a prevailing attitude in the military, and some of the Joe recruits came in displaying that attitude. It didn't last long at Joe base; Lady Jaye, Scarlett, and Cover Girl taught them better, sometimes painfully if they had to, but by the end of recruit training at Joe base you either developed a healthy respect for The Girls or Hawk made sure they left. Back when he'd first assumed command, he had to admit he'd had some of the same prevailing attitude, but after dealing with The Girls he'd come to respect, then admire, and now he was a staunch defender of women in the armed forces. Of course, they still had to be exceptional in order to join the Joes, and there weren't that many exceptional women, but after having met Olivia and Alex—two exceptional women in ordinary civilian jobs, he wondered now whether he just hadn't been paying attention.

He made a circuit of Camp Mackall, and didn't find her. Puzzled, he did it again—then walked the perimeter. He was doing this the third time, beginning to wonder vaguely if he should let Base Commander Hilton know she was missing, when he heard the strains of soft flute music coming from—well, it seemed like it was coming from everywhere around him. He whipped his head around, scanning the surrounding forest for any sign of her, but it wasn't until the music stopped and he heard a soft laugh that he thought to look up.

And there, wedged in the crotch of a huge old oak tree, was Cam.

Actually, wedged was the wrong word. 'Wedged' implied some measure of discomfort; looking at her as she leaned half-out of the tree smiling, she seemed at home in the tree, as if she were used to doing this. Clayton couldn't remember the last time he'd climbed a tree because he wanted to, not to evade capture or in some way connected to a soldier's work. She'd unwrapped her braids from around her head, and he could see now that unbound, her hair would probably fall to her waist.

She spoke to him with a smile, and he noticed again how the smile transformed her strong-featured, rather plain face to almost-pretty. "If you tilt your head any farther back you'll get whiplash, Sir," she said, and there was definite merriment in her eyes and voice. "Wait a moment and I'll come down."

Another surprise; as she swung out of the tree Clayton noticed she was wearing what would be considered 'Traditional Indian' clothes; buff tunic and leggings of what he was absolutely sure was deer or some such leather. The only exception to her garb was the sneakers she wore as she dropped the last few feet out of the tree to land lightly in a crouch on the grass underneath, then stood and dusted her hands off. Despite the ordinariness of the move, for some reason everything she did, every movement she made, was graceful. He'd never met anyone who moved quite like her.

"Was that you?" he asked as she stood in front of him. "Oh, and we're off duty. When I'm off-duty and not in the uniform you don't have to call me 'sir.' Right now I'm just 'Clayton'."

She nodded in acknowledgement and then answered his question. "Yes, that was me," she said."I was hiding up there. I saw you pass the first time but I didn't know if you were looking for me. I figured it out when you walked by the second time, but I waited to see if you'd even think of looking up. When you didn't I played when you walked by so that you'd know I was here and my dropping out of the tree in front of you wouldn't give you a coronary."

He grinned at her choice of words, feeling sheepish. "You're right, I didn't even think of looking up," he said.

"It's all right. No one does. For some reason it seems like our desire to climb trees ends at adulthood. I'm just lucky I never felt that way." She reached behind her and tugged a long, thin cylinder of wood from the back of the leather belt wrapped around her trim waist. "It was this you heard." She held it out.

Clayton took it carefully from her. A Native American flute, obviously handmade, painstakingly hollowed and carved with figures of deer on one side and wolves on the other. "I get the wolves, since you're Wolf Clan, but the deer?"

"My Iroquois name is Kenastie Scannado, the Deer-Who-Leads," she said quietly but with pride in her voice.

Clayton smiled at her as he handed the flute back to her. "Well, Deer-Who-Leads, I would have to say that's a good name for you. I've never seen anyone who moves quite the way you do. So was your mother Native American or your father?"

"Papa was Haudenasaunee—that's what the Iroquois call themselves. He was stationed at Osan Air Force Base, in South Korea, when my mother came to him with an infant baby girl and told him she was his. He took the baby and she disappeared." A trace of bitterness in her voice. "So I never knew her. Papa kept me on base, one of his best friends had a wife and child on base and they raised me with them until I was ten. There was some sort of accident with his plane and he died, and of course after that I couldn't stay. Papa had no living relatives, his parents died and he had no brothers or sisters, so they found some distant relatives of my mother's living in New York City and sent me there. I found my father's people when I was eighteen and lived with them on reservation until I was twenty-three. Papa didn't have any brothers or sisters but some of the elders of Bear Clan remembered him from when he was a boy and Wolf Clan adopted me into the tribe. They taught me their ways and treated me just like one of them."

They'd been walking as they talked, and he'd been following her, absorbed in the story she was telling him. Now she stopped walking and bent, and he saw her swords in the tall grass at the edge of a small meadow. "I was practicing here when I heard someone walk by, and I thought it might be someone looking for me, so I hid until I knew who it was." She yanked both swords up from where she'd apparently driven them into the dirt, then wiped the blades clean against the leg of her deerskin pants.

"Your clothes…"

"A Haudenosaunee maiden is accepted into the tribe as a woman when she demonstrates that she can provide for her family should she need to leave her husband. That means making a full set of traditional clothes, using traditional tools and hunting methods to bring down enough game to feed her immediate family. Once she does that she's entitled to a house and land of her own."

"Wow. I thought women had a pretty subservient place in society. It's only males that can be chiefs, right?"

She grinned. "Only males can be chiefs but only the women of the tribe can elect the chief. And the Chief's sister has the right to strip him of his status if she feels he's not making the right decisions. Nowadays it's mostly ceremonial, but the traditions and customs are still in place."

"Chink squaw!" came a shout; Blasetti, Clayton identified, and the rest of Knight's team. He stiffened as he turned; that was the rudest thing he'd ever heard someone say. Beside him, Cam put a hand on his arm, gently restraining him as she sheathed her swords.

"Forget them, Clayton. It's just words. They don't mean anything." She tossed a heavy black braid over her shoulder and tucked her flute into the back of the leather belt that confined her tunic. "I'm going back to barracks to look over my notes. Some of those legal codes were confusing."

She ignored Pioneer's group as she strode through the tall grass toward a narrow dirt path that led back to camp, and Clayton fell into step beside her. Just when he thought they were going to pass without further incident, a hand reached out and snatched her flute from the back of her belt.

She turned, her voice and eyes hard. "Give it back."

"What, this?" Blasetti taunted her, waving it overhead. She made a grab for it, but it was out of her reach; she was shorter than he was. "This little trinket?"

"It's mine. Give it back." She folded her arms, shoulders stiff.

Clayton recognized the warning signs of a woman getting pissed. Normally he'd get out of the way and just let her teach the arrogant little puppy a lesson, but this was training, and he didn't know if she'd get in trouble. "Blasetti. Give it back." He tried to defuse the situation.

"What, or you'll make me, old man?" Blasetti sneered, and Clayton clenched his fist at his sides. The urge to pull rank on the guy was almost overwhelming. "You want it back, chink squaw? Come and take it." He handed the flute to Knight, behind him, and adopted a fists-up fighting stance.

"I'm not fighting you, you idiot." Her voice held thinly-disguised contempt. "There's no point. You wouldn't learn anything from it anyway."

"You think you can teach me a lesson?" He lunged for her.

She slid aside, barely ruffling a hair. "Stop it, Marco. Just give me back my flute. You don't want it anyway."

He lunged for her again. Again she slid aside. When he turned back he tried to catch her in a tackle; she jumped as he went low, tripped, and sprawled, and ended up standing over his body lying prone on the ground, arms folded. "Knock it off! What's wrong with you?"

For answer he rose from his prone position, grabbing her around her waist and pulling her down. She twisted in his grasp, but suddenly Warren was there, grabbing a handful of one long braid, then yanking down sharply. Tangled in Blasetti's grasp, she went down, and moments later she was lying flat on the ground as Warren planted a foot on her hair and ground her braids under his heel into the dirt. She cried out as his boot heel tugged the strands unmercifully.

Clayton sprang into action, grabbing Warren and yanking the man backward off Cam just as she reached up to Blasetti, straddling her prone body, and drove her fist into his jaw at the same time her knee slammed into his crotch. She had the smallest hands of anyone Clayton had ever seen, but the size of the fist apparently didn't have anything to do with the force behind it; Blasetti's head jerked backwards and he fell off her with a strangled groan. She shot up, feet shoulder-width apart, ready in case they were going to try anything else, when a shout stopped all movement in the clearing. "Atten-TION!"

And here came Colonel Hilton, with Colonel Broadview and the instructor who'd taught them the POW code that morning, Sergeant Halloran. "What the hell is going on?" He looked at Cam, standing at attention; at Clayton, standing just behind Warren; at Warren, standing at attention surreptitiously trying to hide Cam's flute behind his back; and at Blasetti, lying on the ground groaning at the pain in his groin. "I asked a question!"

"Sir! Abernathy and I were talking and Blasetti and Warren grabbed my personal property! Sir!"

"So you decide to fight him to get it back? We don't allow fighting here at camp, Arlington!"

Clayton stepped forward. "Sir. Arlington and I were talking and Warren and Blasetti came up. They took an item of her personal property from her. When she requested they return it Blasetti told her to come and take it. She tried several times to defuse the situation by refusing to fight when he attacked her, but he escalated it until she was forced to defend herself, at which time Warren got involved and I stepped in to try and put an end to it."

"Looks to me like she instigated it," Broadview sneered.

Clayton gritted his teeth. "All due respect, Sir, but she was out here with her swords. If she had been serious about causing harm, or if she had instigated the fight, those swords would have been drawn and she would have been using them. As you can see, they are still sheathed and she has not used them at all." He pointed to where Cam's swords lay forgotten in the grass.

Broadview knelt to check the moaning Blasetti. "Are you okay, soldier?"

"She got me in the nuts, Sir!" Blasetti whined.

Halloran looked at Warren. "Do you currently have possession of an item of Arlington's personal property?" he demanded.

Slowly, Warren brought the flute out from behind his back. "Here, you can have it back. We were just teasing," he said gruffly as he threw it on the ground. Clayton stifled a gasp of dismay; in the scuffle, the delicate little cylinder of wood had been broken, the flute cracked up the middle. He leaned over and picked it up, then held it out to Cam, who took it expressionlessly, her face showing none of the dismay she must be feeling at seeing something she'd so painstakingly carved so wantonly destroyed.

Halloran snapped. "There is no excuse for this kind of juvenile behavior. Arlington, Warren, Abernathy, Blasetti; cleanup duty in the mess hall tomorrow night. Warren, Blasetti, mopping duty in the mess hall tomorrow morning before breakfast."

"Blasetti is injured. Warren was only teasing. You can't exactly blame him, Arlington is…rather outlandish looking right now." Broadview protested.

"He'll be okay by tomorrow. There is no excuse for laying hands on another person's property. That is theft. We do not steal and we do not tolerate thieves among us." Halloran said firmly, and Base Commander Hilton nodded.

"I concur. Now. Get back to barracks, all of you." Cam marched off without another word; Warren disappeared just as quickly, and Halloran and the Base Commander followed, leaving Broadview to help the still-groaning Blasetti to his feet (sort of) and usher him off, presumably to the infirmary.

Clayton followed, stopping to pick up Cam's sword baton, which she'd apparently forgotten in her haste to get back to barracks. He didn't want to disturb her, so he gave the door to the women's barracks a light tap, opened the door just enough to slide the baton into the door, then closed it quietly. He waited for a moment until he heard a rustling from the other side; she'd come and picked them up, then, and he was just about to head back to barracks in the deepening twilight when something caught his eye.

A mangled little cylinder of wood lying in the top of the trashcan next to the barracks door.

He reached for it, picked it up. A glance showed him there was no way the delicate little flute could be repaired, and even if it could somehow be glued back together, it would never sound the same. A sudden inspiration seized him, and he took it back to the barracks with him. Everyone was still out enjoying the last half hour of free time, so what he was about to do wouldn't be witnessed.

He found a cardboard box that someone's family had evidently sent something small to their soldier in, and he carefully packed it with the flute, wrapped in newspaper, and wrote a note:

_Allie, can you give this to Frank or Charlie, see if they can figure out what kind of wood it is and ask them if they can find another one, something similar? The soldier who made it is Iroquois, Seneca tribe, Wolf clan, from Cattaraugus County Reservation in western New York. It suffered an unfortunate accident that was partly my fault. I realize that nothing can replace something handmade but I want to at least try. Clayton._


	8. Chapter 8: Flute

**Chapter 8: Flute**

"So what about it? Do you think you can find something similar?" Allie looked at the little cylinder of wood dwarfed by Charlie IronKnife's big hands.

Charlie was handling it carefully, delicately. "I don't think you and Clayton quite understand, Allie. When one of the People make an instrument like this a little part of the maker's soul goes into the craftsmanship. It's irreplaceable."

Allie sighed. "I figured you'd say something of the sort. I'll write Clayton and tell him it's not something that can be replaced—"

"Wait." Charlie held up a hand. "Did Clayton say who she was?"

"She?" it was Allie's turn to look lost. "His note just said the soldier who owned it was Iroquois, Seneca tribe, Wolf clan."

"This was made by a woman," Charlie turned the broken cylinder of wood in his hands. "It's unusual, because usually courting flutes like this are made by a warrior who wants to catch the attention of a maiden he likes; he makes one and plays songs outside her lodge to woo her."

"That's…kind of romantic," Allie smiled. "How do you know it was made by a woman?"

For answer Charlie turned it over and showed Allie the deer. "See the carving of the doe at the end of the flute? The fact that it is a doe, with no antlers, signifies the gender of the maker. And it is cut deeper into the wood, with much more detail. She is the deer in front." He ran a finger over the two other deer cut into the side of the flute. "These deer are actually fawns—babies. And they aren't cut as deeply. They signify the children she would like to have, but there is no buck carved, which means she has no warrior to share her lodge. But the fact that she carved a courting flute means she is high enough in status within her tribe that she is considered a warrior, and as such has earned the right to pick her own mate—which gives her the right to make a courting flute." He smiled.

"So if everything means something, what's the flames cut into the bottom of the flute, and around the finger holes?" Allie asked.

Charlie shook his head. "That I don't know. Something very personally significant to the maker, I think, but maybe not something that anyone else would know. I would have to ask her."

"Well, it's not likely, because she's at Camp Mackall going through SERE with Clayton." The look of distaste on Charlie's face reflected Allie's own thoughts. "Yeah, I know, but hey, we all had to."

"Only the maker can replace her flute. But I can tell you that the wood is cedar, and there was a flaw already in the wood; the tree this was made from had a virus, and it warped the wood's grain, a spalt—this would be called spalted cedar. If you look at the break line carefully you can see the dark spalt line." He showed it to Allie. "We cannot replace the flute, but I could perhaps find a better piece of cedar for her to create a new one. If Clayton was indeed partially responsible for the breakage of this one, it will mean much more to her to receive a blank that she can then carve. She will see it as a sign of respect for her traditions and beliefs."

"How long do you think it'll take you to find an appropriate blank?"

Charlie looked troubled. "I don't know. There are a few places in New York where I can check, and there are some mail-order places that will sell cedar branches, but I do not know how long it will take to find one suitable for her. I can write to my parents and ask if our tribe's craftsman has anything, but it will take time. A couple of weeks, certainly."

"Well…do your best. Let's hope you can find something by the time SERE wraps up at the end of the month, or we'll have to send it to…wherever her base is."

Although Clayton was definitely not looking forward to using his free time to clean up the mess hall after evening chow, the sight of Blasetti and Warren grimly handling mops on the floor the next morning cheered him up immensely. They shot him dirty looks—and at Cam—but she steadfastly ignored them, and Clayton did likewise.

The day's course work was sufficiently challenging enough to drive all other thoughts out of his mind. The focus today was on enemy interrogation—the process whereby a captured soldier would be taken into enemy custody, detained and interrogated.

"Phase I is called the Initial Conditions phase. If your captor is following the Geneva Convention conditions, a medical exam will be given at the start of this phase to establish baseline norms for you as a detainee, then isolation and sensory deprivation will begin. Everything at this phase is designed to impress upon the detainee that events are no longer under your control, that you are completely at the mercy of your captors, completely dependent on them. The next phase is the 'Transition to Interrogation' phase, and this will involve a brief intake interrogation where they will attempt to ascertain your value as a captive. Lower-ranking soldiers will have briefer initial interrogations; higher-ranked members and troop leaders are necessarily going to be subject to more intense questioning efforts as 'high-value targets'.

"At this phase the only information you are required to give is name, rank, service number and date of birth. If your captor is following the Geneva Convention, at this point you will fill out a Convention card that will be sent to the US to indicate that you are being held as a POW. This card will inform your government of your current status and condition. Next of kin should also be filled out so that your family will know where you are.

"All of this goes out the window, of course, if you are being held by a hostile force not following the rules of the Geneva Convention. However, regardless of the type of detention or harshness of your captivity, you're expected to maintain military bearing at all times. You are expected to be polite and courteous toward your captors, remain calm and project dignity. In the early phases of detention and interrogation this is important because your captors are still uncertain of you. If you appear to be constantly in control, there are less cracks in the armor with which they can intensify their hold on you psychologically. Discourteous or rude behavior immediately labels you as someone who will likely crack under pressure and in addition can result in unnecessary punishment, which can deteriorate your physical condition and hamper any efforts to escape, both for you if solo or for anyone captured with you.

"The next phase is interrogation. They will seek to dehumanize and degrade you by demonstrating that you have no control over your basic human needs and bodily functions. One of the quickest and most expedient ways they will try to break you is to remove all clothing. Modesty isn't going to help you here, and if you're insecure about how you look under your clothes this is not going to be easy. They will also seek to keep you awake, reasoning that when you are tired you have lower tolerance to pain, and when tired you are more apt to 'let slip' some important piece of information you may have that they may want. Your bodily movement will be restricted by use of shackles or bonds, and your control over basic bodily functions will be taken away by dietary manipulation that will lead to loss of control of your excretory system. Psychologically this will be humiliating and degrading as they will either place a diaper on you or subject you to forced washing."

His eyes flickered to Cam, who looked back at him expressionlessly. Clayton thought that playing poker with her had to be hell; she was a master at not letting you see what she was thinking. Her face was a smooth, mannequin-like mask. "If you are captured with a member of the other gender, they will try to use your natural instincts against you. The human male's instinct, particularly the instincts of one in command, is going to be to protect the female POW, whether civilian or military support. You must not let them know that you care, because it will give them another weapon to use against you emotionally."

They were easy words, but in practice, they were nearly impossible to follow. Clayton wondered if Halloran had ever been captured by hostile forces. Had he ever gone through what Dash had gone through, captured with Alex, forced to watch her beaten, forced to listen to her scream as she endured three days of rape and sexual torture? Dash had admitted privately to Clayton—not Hawk, because General Hawk would have been compelled to take Flint to task over his loss of control—but Dash had admitted to Clayton that he'd cursed Zimurinda, had screamed and threatened to kill the man when he was hurting Alex.

Halloran ran through the 'corrective techniques' that could be used by one's captors to assert physical control. Face slapping and the abdominal slap, both of which were basically the same thing but applied to different body parts and used throughout questioning, and the facial hold, which Halloran demonstrated on Walker, gripping the man's face in his hands and forcing the trainee to look at him, and the attention grasp, which he demonstrated on Warren, grabbing a double handful of Warren's collar and physically yanking him toward Halloran.

Although she'd been expressionless and silent throughout the class, taking lots of notes and paying close attention to Halloran, it was hard to read what she was thinking. Clayton looked for her after the morning session was over and they were dismissed to mess, but she shouldered her pack and hurried off toward the women's barracks, and he didn't see her at lunch. The afternoon session was devoted to studying 'coercive techniques'; those techniques designed to put the detainee into physical distress. Walling was one of the most effective; the physical act of placing a support collar around the detainee's neck to prevent whiplash injury and then pushing the detainee into a wall created physical stress and uncertainty about what the interrogator would do next. Placing a hood over the detainee's head and then dousing it with water was a 'kinder' form of the now-forbidden waterboarding; Clayton was glad. While he knew that there had been a lot of controversy about it, the fact that waterboarding was now not permitted in the US Armed Forces training was a relief because even though he knew the US's enemies would now know US soldiers would be unfamiliar with the experience, chances were slim that the majority of the US's soldiers would ever be faced with a POW situation and so it wasn't really a necessary bit of the course.

Stress positions, of course; and here the instructor had them push the chairs out of the way and had them assume several of those positions; crouching, the body's weight balanced on the balls of his feet, buttocks resting on his heels, fingers laced together behind his neck. On his knees with his arms pulled backwards over a tabletop, putting stress on his shoulders, arms, and wrists; kneeling up, his entire body weight balanced on his knees and shins, hands held behind the small of his back with his forehead pressed against the wall. As he got up from that position, his knees forcibly reminded him he wasn't as young as he used to be!

And then he ran through some of the techniques that unethical, non-Geneva-Convention-abiding hostile forces would use; physical battery, whipping, electrocution (Clayton shuddered as he remembered what that had felt like) and rape. It wasn't unheard of for hostile forces to rape servicemen as well as servicewomen; he knew that from experience. He wondered, though, if any servicemen had ever been forced to rape another female POW, as Dash had been forced to rape Alex, as he'd been forced to rape Olivia. She hadn't held it against him, had understood that it wasn't his fault, and was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the child from that incident—but it was still rape, and the child was still his. He stole a quick glance at Cam, wondering if this bald recitation of facts was going to bother her, but she was impassive and inscrutable and he couldn't read her.

Having taught them the physical techniques of interrogation, Halloran let them leave for the afternoon with the parting injunction that the focus of the next day was going to be on the psychological aspect of interrogation and torture, and Clayton finally caught up with her as they headed for the mess hall. "So what did you think?" he asked her.

She stopped walking, but didn't look at him. She was obviously struggling with something, and he was about to prompt her gently when she blew out her breath all at once and said, "Clayton, I'd rather not discuss it."

That raised alarm bells for him; what was it about that class that could start some sort of internal struggle? He gripped her arm as he said, "Cam, were you _raped_!"

She didn't say anything, didn't look at him, but he felt her arm tense under her sleeve. He dropped her arm with a muttered swearword. "Jesus. I'm sorry, Cam."

"Let's not talk about it." She looked up at him, and he saw the pleading in her eyes even though her voice was steady. "Please."

"All right." He'd let it go…for now. But he was starting to develop a lot of questions, and maybe she'd feel better about opening up once the training portion of the month was over.

For now…dish duty.

She seemed to recover some of her equilibrium as they headed for the kitchen. When they'd finished with their meal, Warren and Blasetti had wordlessly grabbed for the rolling trashcan at the end of the room and started collecting the plates left, scraping them clean in the can before piling them on a tray meant for the kitchen. Cam rose and headed for the kitchen with Clayton.

They cleaned the food-prep dishes first; the pots and pans, serving trays and serving utensils. She relaxed as she washed, and Clayton dried, and eventually he even heard her humming a little tune under her breath. Clayton listened to her for a moment, then tentatively asked her about it. "What's that? It sounds lovely."

"It's a song Haudenosaunee women sing to their children to lull them to sleep. A lullaby." And she sang it again, this time loud enough for him to hear the words. Her voice was clear, pure, slightly husky, the kind of voice that would do bad things to a young man's libido.

She was singing it a second time and trying to teach him the words when the kitchen door opened and Blasetti walked in; she instantly stopped singing, going expressionless and cold, but he shuffled in, put a stack of mess trays on the counter, then said awkwardly, "Um…I'm sorry."

She stared at him, didn't say a word.

"I'm sorry," he repeated a little louder. "Um, Warren dared me to come over and get you on the ground. He said it was only a little harmless fun and wouldn't hurt anyone. I didn't know he was going to break your flute like that."

"I made that. That was the first one I ever made. Every instrument made by the People is unique and irreplaceable."

Blasetti looked pathetically miserable. "I'm sorry."

She smiled at him, although her eyes still looked sad. "It's okay, Marco. I understand you didn't mean it. No one expected it except maybe him. It's all right." Marco Blasetti looked considerably more relieved when he left the kitchen to continue collecting trays, and Cam returned to the dishes, and her singing.

By the time he rolled into bed that night Clayton had as much on his mind as he had fatigue in his joints. Her revelation of the afternoon still stunned him and he was more curious than ever to find out more about her. He was also focused on the training ahead, on the resistance portion particularly, and having the Iroquois words swirling around in his head had given him some idea of how he could get his team through the RTL. One of the skills they were supposed to develop was the use of covert communication in developing clandestine POW camp organization. If he could get Demo and Ryder to agree, they could use Cam's language as the root of their resistance efforts; he found it unlikely that the instructors would have heard Iroquois language before, or would have an innate understanding of the language either. They'd use the language in much the same way that the Navajo, Frank Talltree's tribe, had used their language as a way to beat the German intelligence forces trying to monitor Allied communications during World War II. He'd have to broach the subject with her, see if she was willing to teach them the words they'd need to carry this off. Escape, guard, watch, run, sit, listen, hear…

He was still putting together a basic escape vocabulary when he fell asleep.


	9. Chapter 9: Footlocker

**Chapter 9: Footlocker**

It was the first thing on his mind when he woke that morning, and he briefly outlined the idea to Demo and Ryder as they walked to chow together. All three of them liked the idea. "I heard about the Navajo language used during World War II. There was a really good movie made a few years back about it. If she's willing to teach us the rudiments of the language I think it'll be a good idea."

But she wasn't sitting at their mess table when they got there; Clayton didn't worry too much; she'd skipped meals before. He vowed to talk to her about it before class started.

But she never showed up for class. And for the past few days she'd been the first one there, unpacked, reading over her notes from the day before, getting ready for the day's class. He'd gotten so used to seeing her that he felt, deep down, that something was wrong, and he got up. "Where are you going, Hawk? Class's about to start." Demo hissed.

"She's not here and class is about to start. I'm going to go check on her."

"If you're not here when class starts you'll be penalized!" but Clayton, driven now by the thought that something was desperately, horribly wrong, made a beeline for the door, running into Halloran in the doorway of the classroom. "Where are you going, soldier?" Halloran demanded.

Hawk saluted. "Sergeant Halloran, Sir. A member of my team is missing and I'm going to go find her, Sir."

"It's up to her if she doesn't want to come, Team Leader."

Hawk shook his head stubbornly. "She wouldn't have missed class if there wasn't a real reason, Sir. I'm worried."

"You're worried? What do you think can happen in a camp full of soldiers? Irregardless of some personal feelings about women and their placement in the Armed Forces, we are all soldiers and we defend each other with our lives."

"Nevertheless Sir, I will feel better if I went and checked the barracks to ascertain her whereabouts."

Halloran sighed. "I don't know whether to commend you for being that conscientious of your troops or to chide you for becoming personally involved. Do what you have to." He waved a dismissive hand.

Clayton quick-marched out to the women's barracks, giving the door a token tap right before he pushed it open. To his complete surprise, the room was empty. Her bed was neatly made, her footlocker locked securely and sitting in place on the floor as it was supposed to be. Puzzled, he went back outside.

Behind the women's barracks he found his first clue; a leather slipper made in Indian moccasin style. The slipper lay along a trail of crushed vegetation, and he followed it until he reached a small pond in the middle of some marshy swamp grass. And there, in that grass, he found her pack, thrown out there in the middle of the water.

He waded out to get it, grimaced as he pulled it dripping with green water weed out of the scummy pond. Mosquitoes buzzed around him, looking for exposed skin, but he barely waited to get back to land before ripping open the pack.

Everything in it was wet. And stinking. It didn't take him more than a second to figure out that some kind of excrement had been shoved into the pack, thoroughly ruining anything that might have been in it and leaving a stinking, gooey mess. There was no way that this amount of crap would have gotten into the pack by itself; someone would have to have done it. And he was absolutely sure it wouldn't have been Cam.

Where the hell was she?

He marched back into the classroom, heedless of the startled look on Sergeant Halloran's face, and dropped the pack in front of Warren's desk. "Where is she?" he asked flatly, his voice low and dangerous.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Warren looked innocent even as the smell of excrement filled the classroom, catching Halloran's attention. Demo and Ryder stood up from their desks, falling in behind Hawk as he faced Warren.

"I'm not asking again. Where. Is. She."

Halloran stood. "Ryder. Go and get Base Commander Hilton and Colonel Broadview for me. Bring them here. Now!" Ryder ran.

Demo leaned forward and grabbed Warren's shirtfront, using the attention grasp they'd been taught the day before; whether consciously or unconsciously, Hawk didn't know. "Listen, Warren. You and I used to be friends but if you've done something to hurt Cam, we're through. Where is she?"

Warren smirked. "If she's not here she should be in the barracks."

Demo looked enquiringly at Hawk, who shook his head. "I looked in there. She's not in there."

"Then I don't know where she is."

The door opened, and Base Commander Hilton came in, with Broadview and Ryder. "I was told my presence was required. What the hell's going on here?"

"Sir." Halloran saluted. "Team Leader Abernathy came in with Arlington's pack and accused Warren of knowing where she is. Warren maintains he doesn't know, but he has said she is in the women's barracks. Team Leader Abernathy states that he looked and she was not in the barracks."

"You looked in the barracks?" Hilton asked Hawk.

"Yes. The bed was neatly made and does not look to have been slept in. Her footlocker was still securely locked and showed no signs of having been disturbed. Although, seeing her pack here, I would assume that whoever engineered her disappearance also hoped her things would disappear also. The lock…" he froze as something occurred to him.

"The lock is a combination. And she brought it with her from her base. You can't pick that lock, you have to know the combination, so it has to be someone from her base." Clayton spun, turned on Walker. "You're from her base. In fact, you're in her training cadre. Where is she?"

Walker shrugged. "I don't know. I'm as surprised as all of you."

Halloran looked around, spied David Harper in the corner. "Harper. Front and center."

David Harper had a trapped deer-in-the-headlights look as he rose slowly from his chair.

Base Commander Hilton snapped, "I will say this once, and once only. If you know where Arlington is or have had anything to do with her disappearance, you will tell me now."

"I don't know," Harper said.

Even Clayton could spot it for the bald-faced lie it really was, and Hilton spotted it too. His voice was sharp as he said. "Think about this very carefully, Ranger Harper. I will ask you one more time. If I find you have lied to me you will be discharged from this program, sent back to your unit in disgrace and your file will be annotated. There is no honor in harming a fellow soldier, and even less honor in lying about it." He saw Harper's eyes dart frantically to the left, to meet Walker's stony gaze. "Loyalty to your unit and your commander is good, but that loyalty only extends while your team leader is worthy of it. Now I will ask you one more time. Where is Arlington?"

"She—she's in the women's barracks. We locked her in her footlocker last night."

"Last NIGHT?" Hilton's voice rose. "Someone go—" But Clayton, Demo and Ryder were already moving, followed closely by Halloran.

A regulation military footlocker was about three feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep. Cam, with her short, slim build, would have fit but it would have been a tight squeeze…and with the lid down and locked there would have been no room for movement at all. What worried Clayton as he and Demo and Ryder pelted full-speed toward the women's barracks was that he'd gone inside and he'd called her. She should have heard him, should have responded, unless she wasn't able to. Which was entirely possible, if she'd been in there all night! He'd said good night to her in the mess kitchen at eighteen hundred last night; it was now just about noon. He didn't know when they'd put her in there but it had to be over twelve hours.

"Cam! Cam!" Ryder fell to his knees beside the footlocker, pounding on the lid. "Cam, are you in there?" Not waiting for an answer, he gave the side of the box a shove, then looked at Clayton, horrified. "She has to be in there. There's something heavy inside this and we know it's not her stuff!"

"Cam, it's Clayton. Can you hear me? Give me some sign if you can."

Silence. He was just about to give up when he heard a faint tap.

She was in there! He felt relief that she wasn't missing followed by dread at what they'd find when they opened the lid. "Cam, I don't know the combination. I know the pattern but I don't know the combination. Can you give me the numbers?" he turned to Ryder. "Get Base Commander Hilton. Tell her she's in the footlocker and we need the combination right away. If the rest of her training cadre knew how to get it open to lock her in, they can give us the combination to get her out."

It seemed to take her a long time to respond, but finally Clayton heard a faint tapping. "One…two…three…four…five…six," he counted the taps. "Cam? Six? Is that the first number of the combination?" The he cursed; she couldn't talk or she would have screamed already. "Tap once for yes, twice for no," he said, and moments later he heard a single faint tap.

Demo had the lock in his hand and was already turning the combination dial. "Three times to the right, stop at six," he muttered. "All right, what's next?"

"What's next Cam? Come on, I know it's been a while but you can do it. Come on, what's the next digit?"

He counted ten, but there was a lot of time between the last few taps; was she tiring? How had she been put in there, that it would take such a monumental effort just to hit the side of the box? After what seemed like a long pause, just as Demo was starting to turn the dial counterclockwise to ten, there were ten more taps.

Demo looked at Clayton. "Was that ten or was that twenty?"

Clayton leaned over. "Cam? Was that ten?"

Two slow taps. No. "Use twenty," Clayton said, then turned angrily as he heard noise and commotion at the door to the barracks. "Stop moving, all of you, we can't hear!" He turned back to the box. "Cam, what's the last number?"

Eight taps.

And he almost ripped the lid off the footlocker, then stared aghast. Cam lay in the bottom of the footlocker, legs bent and body curled in a semi-fetal position. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, but there was a hank of heavy rope tying her ankles to her wrists and a huge knot of rope shoved between her teeth, tied behind her head, then wrapped around her neck before being tied off to her ankle and wrist bindings. She was still in her fatigues, but her hair had come out of their customary braids and lay tangled around her face, and by the smell she'd been trapped in there so long she'd been forced to relieve herself.

"Oh Jesus," and with strength he didn't even know he had, Clayton tilted the box, spilling her onto the floor. Her inability to communicate with them was explained when he saw that the ropes had been tied around her body in such a way that if she moved her hands and feet at all the loop of rope around her neck tightened. Her efforts to tap the side of the box with her tied hands had also been hampered because her feet and hands were blue from lack of circulation, and at the moment just getting air to breathe was torture; while she'd been tapping the combination to Clayton the rope had been tightening inexorably around her neck. It explained the long pauses between responses; she'd had to fight for enough air just to stay conscious, and talking was out of the question.

He always carried a small penknife with him, and he put it to good use now, slashing the ropes that bound her in that position, then, somewhat more carefully, he cut the rope around her neck and released her gag. She gulped in a huge lungful of air, and then the next sound out of her was a sobbing scream as circulation started returning to her blue hands and feet. Clayton gritted his teeth as she writhed on the floor, twisting; there was nothing that could be done about the pain of returning circulation; she would have to deal with it until bloodflow returned.

Base Commander Hilton was pale with rage when he turned to the silently watching trainees; Halloran was grimly silent and even Broadview looked shaken. "Harper. Walker. Step forward." His voice was shaking with rage as he spat, "Which one of you was responsible for this!"

"It was a joke. I was planning to release her this morning." Walker spoke first.

"This was no joke, this was planned and deliberate!" Clayton could feel cold fury rising.

"I agree. Which one of you came up with the idea?" Hilton demanded. Neither man spoke.

"All right. I want both of you to pack your things this minute. You will be leaving on the next transport to Fort Bragg, and from there you will return to your base. You have flunked the SERE-C course and will be issued a lack of honor discharge from this program, which means you will not be allowed to return. Your commanders will be so notified, your records will be annotated." He turned away from them, then turned back. "How long was she in there?"

Harper seemed to want to make a clean confession. "We ambushed her when she returned from the kitchens last night. I knocked her to the floor and Walker tied the rope around her neck until she passed out, then we tied her up and shoved her in there. I thought we were going to let her out this morning—he said she wouldn't be harmed by spending a night in there."

"Look at her hands. Look at her feet." Clayton's voice was icy as he pointed to Cam's right hand. Circulation had been cut off for so long her hand was a twisted blue claw, and she was still crying with the pain. "Oxygen in trapped blood forms bubbles. Once the limb is stretched out and the bubbles reenter the bloodstream, they form something called an embolism. If it reaches her heart, her heart could stop; if it reaches her brain it can stop bloodflow and leave behind permanent brain damage. Did either of you even think about that before you did this?"

"I'm sorry," Harper choked, and even though he sounded sincere, Clayton wasn't having any pity at all.

"Sorry doesn't cut it. If she suffers any lasting permanent damage from your little stunt you could be court-martialed for assault and battery and a lot of other charges. She spent almost eighteen hours in that box. She could have died in there." Clayton stood. "Get the hell out of my sight."

He ignored everything else going on as he stooped and picked her up. She felt tiny in his arms, her one hundred thirty pounds costing him no effort at all. She was still crying, incoherent little sobs, but she did manage to get a few words out. "S-sorry…"

"You have nothing to be sorry for. They did it, not you," and he was out the door, heading for the infirmary, ignoring the confused mass milling around behind him.

"Hurts…" It was the first time he'd heard her say anything that even resembled a complaint.

"There we go, you're human after all. You never complain about anything, I was starting to wonder if you were human." That brought a wan smile to her face as he carried her into the camp's infirmary and laid her on the bed and waved a doctor over. "Get checked out. Let's make sure you're okay, all right?"

"Class—"

"Don't worry about class. Just be okay." Then, "You still want to go through the course after this?"

"I have to if I want to be a Ranger," she said firmly. "I'll be fine. Look. My hands are going back to normal."

They still looked blue to Clayton. And he didn't want to think about how much pain she might still be feeling as cramped tortured muscles stretched and unknotted; she was very good at hiding what she was thinking and feeling. "Just get some rest. Worry about everything else tomorrow."


	10. Chapter 10: Discussion

**Chapter 10: Discussion**

"I can't even begin to express how shocked I am over the entire thing," Hilton said, running a hand through his hair. "Christ, I've been commander here for eight years and nothing like this has ever happened before. General Abernathy—"

"Just Abernathy, or Hawk," Hawk held up a hand. "I'm no different than one of the kids out there. Forget rank." Even as he spoke, however, he wondered if he'd been included n this little conversation because he was Arlington's team leader or because they were suddenly anxious that he would level charges against them for their mishandling of the program. As a two-star General, and higher in rank than every other person in this room, including Base Commander Hilton, Hawk's words could carry a lot of weight with the guys in Washington. Thus far into the conversation all three of the men—Hilton, Halloran, and Broadview—had been expressing profuse apologies and shock that 'something like this' had happened.

"I don't often look at the personnel records of the SERE trainees before they get here," Hilton said almost apologetically as he passed Broadview a personnel folder with 'Arlington' written on it. "I don't want to unfairly bias myself and my staff against any one of the trainees. So I didn't know Cam Arlington was female, and I didn't know you were a General."

_You don't want to unfairly bias yourself and your staff? What about Broadview and the way he's been looking at Cam?_ But he didn't say it aloud. Instead, he said, "If that will be all, I'm going to check on my injured team member and the rest of my team."

"No, that's not all. I wanted you to be in on this conversation I'm having with Arlington and Walker's Base Commander, Shelton Dixon." He hit a switch, and the monitor on his desk came on. "Good evening, Commander Dixon. I'm Base Commander Hilton, commanding Camp Mackall, and the others you see are SERE instructor Sergeant Halloran and Colonel Broadview. And there's someone else here I felt should be included in the conversation." He turned it so that Clayton could see the screen, as well as be seen by the person on the other end.

Shelton Dixon was a short, balding man in his mid-forties. Though he'd never actually met Dixon in person, Clayton did remember exchanging emails and memos with the man regarding possible candidates for the G.I. Joe project. "Good evening, Dixon. We've never met in person, but I'm General Clayton Abernathy."

Dixon's eyes widened. "Abernathy? What are you doing calling me from Camp Mackall?"

"I was here taking a refresher course," Hawk said dryly. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. Shelton, what on earth were you thinking when you stuck Cameron Arlington with a unit headed by a chauvinist like Tony Walker?"

"What happened?" Dixon leaned forward, alert.

"Rangers Walker and Harper ambushed Arlington coming back from the kitchens last night where she and I were on mess detail. They strangled her into unconsciousness, tied her up, packed her in her footlocker and locked it, then threw crap in her pack and tried to sink it in a pond here. She was locked in that box for almost eighteen hours."

Dixon's expletive would have curled Walker's ears had he heard it.

Hilton broke in. "He doesn't have a high opinion of women. When we were handing out team assignments he asked to be placed on a different team from Arlington's. I placed her with Gen—Abernathy's team because he refused to work with her." Clayton decided not to call Hilton on the fact that he'd almost told Cam she couldn't take the course.

"Walker has a major problem with women, particularly on the front lines or forward of the front line of troops. I assigned Arlington to him because she's an excellent soldier and no one here at base can touch her at long range reconnaissance. I originally wanted to put her in LRRP—Long Range Reconaissance Patrol—but she insisted she wanted an RRD. And she's superlative at both, so I sent her to SERE-C with Walker hoping that his attitude would change once he'd seen her in action in a live field exercise."

"It's not going to happen." Hilton said grimly. "After the stunt they pulled this afternoon, I am sending them back to your base with a lack of honor discharge. They are not welcome back, either."

"So they won't have that SERE-C completion. That's going to be a blow to Walker, you know that," Dixon told Clayton. "All we've heard the last few weeks was how much he was looking forward to a posting with your project."

Clayton shook his head. "After the stunt he's pulled, he's not getting anywhere near my project. I got three women on base who would cut him off at the knees for his attitude—and one of them's got an impressive set of swords to do it with." And as he thought about Scarlett—and her impressive set of swords—a slow grin spread across his face. "You know, on a second thought, don't throw away all that paperwork yet. When I get back to my base I'll sign them and you can send Walker to me. Maybe my girls will be able to get through to him. At any rate, they'll have fun trying." Fun? Scarlett would be ecstatic. It wouldn't be the first time that a soldier had come to the Joes with a chip on his shoulder about women, and she and Snake Eyes had worked out an entire training regimen for those recalcitrant individuals. Lady Jaye and Cover Girl enjoyed it too. "I looked at his personnel record, and he _is_ a good soldier except for this tunnel-vision about women. If we could break him of that he would be a good candidate for my project. Let's see if we can temper the steel before we toss it out as useless." Not that he held out much hope. Anyone who could strangle a woman into unconsciousness and then lock her in a three foot box for eighteen hours was a sadistic little bastard, and Clayton was absolutely positive his attitude wouldn't change.

"I can see why you're such a good commander. All right, we'll do it your way. I won't say a word to him until I get the paperwork back from you, though, in case you change your mind."

Clayton stretched as Hilton switched off the vidphone. "And on that note, Base Commander, Sergeant, Colonel," he nodded to Hilton, Halloran, and Broadview in turn, "I'll take my leave. I want to check on Arlington before I turn in, and I want to talk to my team." The three men nodded, and Clayton saluted himself out the door.

The infirmary was empty when he stopped, and an orderly informed him Arlington had been sent back to her barracks. "She didn't really want to be here, and her teammate said he'd keep an eye on her and make sure she rested, so we released her."

"Her teammate?' Wondering, Clayton headed for the women's barracks—and there found Cam sitting on her bed, smiling as she, Demo, and Ryder played a brisk game of cards. "I thought you were supposed to be resting," he said as she closed the door and sat on the end of the bed next to hers.

"Well, I sort of am. I'm not moving—much," she said, flashing him a grin as she studied the hand she was holding. "Ryder told the nurse at the infirmary that he'd make sure I rested so they'd release me. Sergeant Halloran will be replacing my footlocker, and Colonel Broadview is getting Walker and Harper to clean my clothes—the ones they spoiled by putting crap in my pack—before they leave tomorrow. Fortunately most of my stuff was untouched, and my duffel bag is all right; it's just some of my fatigues in the top of my bag that got messed up. The only thing I wouldn't let them touch are my leathers, but those are pretty easy to clean and I took care of them already; they're hanging in the bathroom. And I got to take a shower."

She was in a good mood, and he didn't want to spoil it, but he had to ask. "Cam…what happened?"

"I came back here from the kitchens after mess duty. Someone jumped me from behind, wrapped a rope around my neck so tight I couldn't breathe and I passed out. When I opened my eyes next I was inside the footlocker. I tried to untie my hands, and felt the rope tighten, so I stopped. I thought they'd let me out after a little while, so I think I sort of dozed a little. Next thing I know, you're calling my name, but I couldn't say anything back. You went away, and more time passed, and then suddenly all of you were there." She swallowed, looked down at her cards. "I knew they had the combination and they'd have to give it to you, but I didn't want to be in there any longer, so I tapped out the combination to you. And you got me out."

She smiled, but the smile didn't touch her eyes, and Clayton wondered how much she wasn't telling him. Like how she would have gone numb, first, from her cramped position; how she could have slept through the numbness but then pain would have set in as her hands and feet demanded circulation be returned; how pain would have turned into agony, and how she must have cried but been unable to do anything; how much effort it must have taken to give him the combination to the lock, knowing that every tap meant the rope was tightening; fighting panic as her body demanded more air, trying to focus on what she had to do, the number of taps she had to give him. It took a lot of courage and strength of will.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

She started to say something and was interrupted by a yawn. "I'm fine—" another yawn, "Although maybe I could use some sleep."

"Absolutely," Demo gathered up the cards and took hers from her hand. "I agree. You should get some sleep."

She swatted him with her right hand, and Clayton couldn't help but see the raw rope burn around the slim, sinewy wrist. "You're only folding the game because you're losing."

Clayton laughed at Demo's insulted look. "Well, nevertheless, you should get some rest. You can't have gotten much last night."

"Not really," she said as she rose from the bed, walking the three men to the door. "All right. Get on with you all, and I'll see you at class tomorrow morning."

"Oh, that's what I came to give you," Demo fished out his class notebook. "Halloran was going over psychological techniques today and I took notes. You're welcome to study them tonight."

She took it gratefully. "Thanks, guys. For everything." She didn't have to say anymore; they understood. If they hadn't gotten her out then, when would she have gotten out? When were Harper and Walker planning to let her out? Would she have gotten out before permanent damage was done?

Ryder voiced their thoughts as they headed back to the men's barracks. "When were Walker and Harper planning to let her out? The manual says cramped confinement should only be used for eight hours or less at a time and no more than eighteen hours a day. What they did to her was torture, Hawk. Demo and I told her she should press charges against them for assault and battery."

"I'm going to try and talk her into that. It was inexcusable." But he was fairly certain he wouldn't have any luck. She struck him as the stoic type, not prone to litigation. _Too bad Liv and Alex aren't here. I'm pretty sure they'd be able to talk her into it._

He fell asleep thinking about it, and woke up very early the next morning with the incident still fresh on his mind. It was still early, and breakfast wouldn't be for another half hour.

He stepped outside the barracks, stretching, then his eye was caught by a light in the window of the women's barracks. _Wonder what she's doing up so early? Shouldn't she still be taking it easy?_ Then another thought hit him. _Maybe she had nightmares and couldn't sleep. Liv gets like that sometimes._

He stopped at the barracks door, gave it a light tap. When there was no answer, he opened it and went in.

She was dressed in a pair of what he recognized as yoga pants—Liv had a pair she practically lived in outside of work—and an oversized t-shirt. She had earphones in her ear, an MP3 player or an iPod on an armband around her arm, and she was dancing.

He froze at the door, spellbound. She'd pushed the other beds together against one wall, pushed the other footlockers over with them, giving herself about fifteen square feet of space. Now he knew why she was so graceful, why every move she made was fluid and sinuous; she was a born dancer. She seemed to float over the floor, twisting, leaping, landing as delicately and quietly as the deer she was named for, only to launch herself airborne again, and as she turned in one spot on the toe of what he recognized as pale pink ballerina's shoes, he could see her eyes were closed and she was smiling, lost in music and movement.

In that one moment she was truly happy.

And then her eyes opened and she saw him, and stumbled back, suddenly graceless as she yanked the earphones out of her ear. "What are you doing!" she hissed at him. "Get out!"

"I-I'm sorry," he stammered, suddenly at a loss for words. "I saw the light on and I wondered if you were okay. Um…I have a friend who went through something traumatic and she still wakes up screaming from nightmares once in a while. I just…" he shrugged. "I just wanted to know if you were okay."

She rolled her eyes, slightly mollified but still suspicious. "All right. You've seen I'm fine."

"They'll also be calling wakeup in fifteen minutes."

She said something in Iroquois that could have been a swearword and hurried to the opposite side of the room, starting to push the beds back in place.

Hawk hurried over and helped her; between the two of them they got the room back to the way it was. "Do you do this often?" he asked her as they got the last footlocker into place at the foot of the last bed.

She looked slightly sheepish. "No. At my base there was a hardwood floor gym; I'd sneak out late at night when no one else was up and dance in the gym. Other than that I'd put on my dancing sneakers and go outside." She sat on her bed and started untying the ribbon that criss-crossed her ankles.

"Why?" Hawk couldn't keep his curiosity back any longer. "Cam, why would you choose to come grubbing in the dirt with us as a soldier, when you could be dancing on stages all over the world for kings and queens and have roses showered at your feet and champagne every night?"

She started to laugh at that. "Clayton…dancing isn't glamorous. It's just as strenuous, in its way, as being a soldier. And it's very, very competitive. It takes a long time to get to be really good, and even when you reach that peak, when you become _prima ballerina assoluta_, you're constantly working to maintain that peak, to stay at the top, because there's always someone out there better than you. And no matter how you try, how you train, how you work, eventually your body simply gets too old to do it. A dancer's life and career is over by thirty, and then it's teaching or quiet obscurity."

"But you're good. I've never seen anyone move like you do. I've seen dancing on TV—" okay, he'd glanced at the performance channels while flipping to the 'man channels' on the base's cable network, "—and you're as good as anyone I've ever seen. Why wouldn't you at least try?"

Her smile turned sad. "Because my body won't hold up to the rigors of training anymore. Papa started my dancing lessons when I was five—my kindergarten teacher told him I could be a great dancer, and he found a class at the local dance studio for me. The teacher taught me then told Papa I had real talent and I should get special training—if I worked hard I could get into Juilliard in New York, and she thought I had a real chance at a spot in the New York City Ballet." Her eyes filmed over and her voice trembled, though she didn't cry. "Papa was so proud of me. He got me the best teachers, the best shoes, the best of everything, and he called me his little ballerina. When he was on base he'd drive me to my recitals, rehearsals, classes, he came to all of them whenever he could. He loved me, and I loved him." She wiped at her eyes.

"I was ten when he died and they told me I couldn't stay at Osan AFB. And then they told me they found some relatives of my mother's in New York City and Papa had left in his will that I should continue to study dancing for as long as I wanted to, and I went because I wanted to get into Juilliard so I could become the dancer he wanted me to be, but things sort of didn't happen that way and I stopped taking classes when I was fifteen. There was an…accident…and by the time I recovered from that my body had taken too much damage to dance professionally anymore. Now it's a hobby, a way to relieve stress, and I've worked out how to incorporate sword work into it so it's a sort of sword-dance. After spending all night in the footlocker I just wanted to be able to stretch out and enjoy the simple freedom of moving again."

Clayton felt the sadness she tried to hide. All of her assertions to the contrary about the hardships of a dancer's life, she had really wanted that life, she'd trained for ten years for that life, and whatever this accident was had denied her that option. And so she'd chosen to follow in her father's footsteps, become a soldier. He couldn't imagine two career choices more at odds with each other, but she was dedicated to her training and her desire to be a Ranger, and Olivia's words 'she should be able to do it if she wants to' had stuck deeper with him than he'd thought. "All right. I'm sorry for grilling you. They're going to call mess in a little bit and I still have to get dressed, so I'll see you at breakfast?" She nodded, smiling at him as she stuffed her ballet shoes into her duffel bag and he left the barracks.


	11. Chapter 11: Organization

**Chapter 11: Organization**

Seeing Walker punished so swiftly and definitively seemed to take the air out of everyone else's dislike. When Cam walked into the mess hall for breakfast ten minutes after Clayton had left her at the barracks, she was greeted with a few gruff, 'Hey's' and 'how are you's'. She seemed taken aback at first, wary of the sudden friendliness from the other students, but when Valverde passed by her seat after breakfast and told her quietly, "Um, hey, uh, I'm glad you're okay, and I'm sorry," she accepted his apology with a warm smile.

With Walker and Harper gone, the student complement dropped to twelve from the original fourteen. Hilton addressed all the students at the beginning of Thursday's class on escape techniques, announcing a reorganization of teams. He gave them a chance to switch to Clayton's team, if they so chose, but no one did, so he reorganized Warren's Team C to include Warren, Blasetti, Valverde, Stanton; then the new Team A became Johnson, Locke, Lewis, and Robinson. Clayton wasn't really impressed with the caliber of Ranger in the newly-reorganized Team A; none of them had the same leadership skills that he, Warren, and Walker had.

With her teammates' departure, he got a glimpse of why Dixon had said she was superlative. The day's topic today was on escape and evasion techniques; Halloran was telling the students that they could avoid being detected if they stepped into running water when Cam interrupted him and firmly and quietly told him that wasn't true, if one's feet or legs were cut and bleeding the blood trail could be picked up in the water.

Halloran regarded her with surprise, then asked her how she would avoid being detected. "Take off my boots and put river mud, and then a layer of leaves, in the bottom of them. If I have bleeding feet or legs the leaves will absorb the blood, and when I stop later I can weigh the leaves down to the riverbed with rocks. Then I make sure that I head in a different direction from the way the water would be flowing. It's usually best to wait until you're at a fork in the river, creek or stream before you change the leaves; that way if they do find the trail, they'll be forced to either make a decision about which fork to follow or they'll have to split their forces to find you."

Hawk blinked; he'd never even thought about doing something like that. He'd never even heard of anyone doing something like that. Halloran regarded her curiously, then said, "And if there is no river or waterway available to try and lose your scent, and your pursuers have scent hounds with them, what do you do then?"

"Circle around upwind of them until you see them. If necessary, give your pursuers an occasional glimpse of you so they swing upwind, then you can circle behind them downwind. Look for dogpiles; when you see one, step in the dog's fecal matter and make sure you get a good coating on your shoes. Yes, it's disgusting and you'll hate the smell, but the dog will be confused by the smell of its own excrement masking your scent and you'll have a better chance of avoiding detection. Alternatively, if you catch and kill an animal, say, a rabbit or squirrel or deer, saturating the soles of your shoes in the animals' blood or using vines to tie the animal's skin and fur over your shoes can mask your scent. Be sure not to touch the sole of your boot, or use your hands to apply these masking scents to your shoes—not that you would want to anyway." A wry smile. "If all else fails, climb a tree and take the high road. It takes more calories and uses a lot more effort, but in the short run, if you evade capture you're not going to mind the extra energy expenditure."

Halloran regarded her thoughtfully. "You sound as if you have experience evading pursuers and trackers. I've never, ever had anyone give me those answers before."

She gave a wry laugh, but there was an edge to it; something underneath the feigned humor. "When the white man was taking over the People's land and territory and rounding them up to herd them onto the reservations they learned all those ways of defeating tracking pursuing forces. We haven't forgotten those tricks and they have been taught to each succeeding generation of warriors."

"Are you considered a warrior in your tribe?"

"Yes," she said quietly without a trace of mockery or pride; a bald statement of fact. "My people are the Iroquois, and we take pride in our women's riding to war alongside their men. Women are equal in status, and in some cases are in higher reverence; there are women warriors as well as male warriors. And although usually the woman puts aside her weapons once she has a male to share her hearth with, not all women choose to have children and keep a lodge, and the wisest tactician in the tribe is usually the oldest warrior female. You may have heard the old saying that poison is a woman's weapon; the Iroquois believe that a woman's weapon is that she thinks…and then acts on that decision without hesitation."

_And so she wouldn't have had any idea just how women are viewed in high-stress military operating specialties like the Rangers_, Hawk thought. _She was too young to understand the difference when she left Osan base after her father died, and her time with the Iroquois as an Iroquois female warrior would have reinforced her belief that women are equally capable. And from what I've seen…she _is_ equally capable. Walker was an idiot for not seeing that…and not trusting his Commander's decision to put her with him. With his charisma and leadership skills and her ability to track and hide, they would have been unbeatable together in an RRD._ Well, it was Walker's loss. And whoever ended up assigned to Cam would gain an incredible asset. They hadn't even gotten into the field yet and Hawk could already see where her skills would be invaluable in a combat situation.

Apparently he wasn't the only one who thought so; mess during lunch and that evening consisted of all the SERE trainees grouped together in a noisy, chattering mass. Clayton sat back and watched with a sense of satisfaction; for the first time the entire group of trainees were acting like they were all on the same side, with none of the marked coldness and indifference they'd seen this far. Warren hung back a little, but he was the only one.

"So have you ever been tracked?" Mark was the first one to ask her. Clayton wondered at the way Cam tensed almost imperceptibly; and when she spoke, her voice had the same edge it had held when Halloran had asked her the same question in class.

"When I told the Clan I wanted to become one of their warrior women I was met with some skepticism. Despite the fact that they adopted me into their clan, I wasn't born and raised as one of them, so they doubted my ability. They devised a test; I went off into the wilderness for a week to survive on my own while being hunted by two of the braves. It was one of the hardest weeks I've ever spent in my life; my reputation was at stake if they caught me, and the braves sent after me were two of the best in our clan. I used every trick I could think of; backtracking, riverwalking, and I used a lot of trees. I'm sure I probably gave some squirrels heart attacks when they saw me swinging through their tree like Tarzan!" Despite the levity in her words, there was none in her voice; instead, a sort of expectancy, like she was waiting for them to challenge her story. And that got Clayton very curious indeed; what was she hiding, that she didn't want to tell them?

"Cam. I don't want to pry, and I understand this is probably none of my business, but I get the feeling you're hiding some things from us. Not your knowledge, but how you came to gain some of it." He broached the subject with her on their customary walk back to the women's barracks. By now the others recognized this almost as a ritual and they retired to their barracks, leaving the two of them alone.

"You're right, it's none of your business." Her tone was sharp, but then she sighed with her next breath. "I'm sorry, Clayton. Please understand that I'm not trying to hide things from you that you might need to know; if I avoid mentioning something it's because it is private and has no bearing on the current training and situation."

"You sound like half your life has been spent in some secret underground bunker somewhere." Clayton joked, but was stunned when she looked at him with eyes gone dark and haunted. "Cam—what did I say?"

"N-nothing. It's nothing." But she'd suddenly gone tense, shoulders hunched, and…were those tears?

"Cameron. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—whatever I said that hurt you, I'm sorry—Cam, for God's sake, if it's something that hurts that badly you should talk about it, the more you keep it inside the more it's going to hurt—" But she was walking past him with fast long strides, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Clayton. It's not you, okay. I just…I don't want to talk about it. Please leave me alone." And she ran the last few steps to the door of the women's barracks and closed it behind her. And he knew he wasn't going to be welcome in there. Not now.

He didn't sleep well that night, replaying their conversation in his mind over and over, wondering what it was he'd said that would make her cry. _A secret underground bunker—but what she told me of her life has been pretty normal so far. She describes her life at Osan with her Dad as happy, and she obviously loved him very much. She went to live in New York and try for Juilliard, but she had some sort of accident when she was fifteen and that ended her dreams of a dancing career. Was it the accident? What happened to her? She might not be able to dance anymore but she's obviously still capable of undergoing rigorous military training, so what accident was it that cost her that dream of dancing?_ _She hasn't had any hesitation in talking to me about her life while her father was alive, and she hasn't had a problem talking about her tribe. So whatever it was that happened to her that's hurting her must have happened between the time her Dad died when she was ten and the time she went to live with the Iroquois at eighteen._

_ For God's sake, what could have happened that hurt her that much?_

He woke in the morning, tired and heavy-eyed, and went to the line for coffee twice, contrary to his usual custom. She showed up a little late to breakfast, outwardly the same cheerful person to everyone else, but Clayton watched her closely and could see she was slightly pale and obviously tired, and she got coffee too. It was the first time he'd ever seen her drink the stuff.

He intercepted her at the coffee line. "Cam." She turned to look at him, but he lowered his voice. "I'm not going to push it. Your business is your business, and I won't pry. I just…if it hurts that much you'll have to talk to someone eventually, and I would be honored if you considered me enough of a friend to confide in me. But only if you want to." He laid a hand on her shoulder gently, a gesture of support, and then got his coffee and walked away quickly.

Fortunately, today's class—their last before having one full day of R&R before the Survival and Evasion phase was supposed to begin—consisted of a refresher on basic survival. Fortunately, because Clayton was already acquainted with the idea and techniques and because he was so tired he wouldn't have been able to concentrate on anything that required him to use his brain.

The instructors had several live chickens brought into camp, and the trainees were told to kill and prepare them for their lunch. And they didn't make it easy, either; the trainees were brought out to the central receiving area of camp and told to stand at attention; then a crate with six live chickens was placed on the ground, opened, and the chickens were allowed to escape the crate. And the trainees were told that there were two chickens per team; and your team had specific chickens, too; there were colored bands around the chicken's legs indicating which team was supposed to capture which two. Then they were to prepare and cook the birds using only basic issue materials (aluminum pot, canteen, knife and all-purpose eating utensil) and whatever they could forage from the woods around the camp.

The chickens ran in panicked flurry all around Camp Mackall; Company A of the 82nd regiment laughed as they watched the members of Team A running back and forth, trying to catch their allotted two chickens. Team C, Warren's team, didn't look all that much better either; they were trying to split up and send two members after one chicken at once, but their birds kept escaping them.

Clayton was somewhat surprised when Cam stepped forward and addressed her teammates directly; he hadn't known she had leadership skills, but she took charge immediately. "Demo, Ryder. See those blackberry bushes over there? Go grab a handful of those berries and put them on the ground here. Hawk, that way, I'll go this way. We're going to circle around those two," she pointed to their two fat brown chickens scurrying out of the way of Warren's half-hearted attempts to catch his white rooster. The orange band marked them as Team B's targets. "Once we get behind them we should be able to herd them towards the berries. Once they see them they'll lose all interest and we should be able to jump on them easily."

And she was right. Ryder and Demo sprinkled berries on the ground; the chickens lost all sense of caution when they saw food set out for them; they settled on the berries and started pecking busily, and it was a matter of only a few minutes to pounce on them from behind. Demo stood with his hands full of squawking brown fowl uncertainly, but Cam took hers firmly and quickly, efficiently, twisted its neck to kill it. Hawk was surprised at her lack of squeamishness, then reflected that she'd probably done worse with her tribe. He'd spent some time listening to Charlie and Frank talk, and from them he gathered that while Native Americans were mostly modernized, there were still certain rituals and traditions carried out in the same way their ancestors had done for time out of mind, and he figured that Cam, as a warrior in her tribe, would have taken part in those traditional rituals. And they'd probably prepared food in traditional ways too.

He sat with Demo and Ryder plucking the feathers out of the chickens and watching as the members of the other two teams ran about trying to catch their chickens. Warren's team had managed to catch one; Warren and Valverde were now arguing over how best to kill it while Stanton and Blasetti were trying to catch their other one; and Team A were having no luck at all with catching either of their birds. By the time Cam came back with what looked like an armful of greenery, Team B's chickens were plucked and ready.

"At least they gave us nice fat ones," she said with satisfaction as she dumped the armload of greenery beside the 'camp' that had been designated as theirs. "All right. Here's what I have. This is cattail root; it tastes like a potato, and it's a good source of starch and simple carbohydrates. This stuff here is wild carrot; I know it doesn't have that carrot-orange color, but trust me, it's what my people would call it. There are some differences between what's in this area and what's on my tribe's reservation, but not that much. We can either peel them, boil them and mash the cattail root like mashed potatoes, or we can leave the skin on, wash them, cut them in cubes and put them in the pot. It's up to you." She looked at Clayton inquiringly.

He spread his hands. "It's been a really long time since I was in a survival position." His ordeal with Olivia in Colombia not included. "You're better at this than I am, so I'm delegating authority. What do you think we should do?"

"Boil the chickens in water." She said promptly. "Slice the cattail root and wild carrot, add the wild garlic and the wild onion I found—" she indicated two more handfuls of greenery, "And make a sort of chicken soup out of it. If we were really in a survival situation, the water in the broth would be important to maintaining hydration, the chicken mixed with other ingredients would make a high-protein soup, we wouldn't have to worry about how to preserve the remainder, and chicken soup also has natural immunity boosters when mixed with the garlic and onion. And there would be enough for four people to have another meal out of it."

Clayton was impressed. "Have at it." Then, as Demo and Ryder started to wash and cut the vegetables, he lowered the chicken into a pot of water and started it boiling. Then he indicated another handful of greenery with roots attached. "What's that?"

She smiled at him. "Neither one of us got good sleep last night, and we still need to get through the rest of today. This is coffee substitute. It's not going to taste quite like real coffee, but it has the same stimulating effect. I thought you could use some."

By the time their instructors came along at mid-afternoon to 'grade' their efforts, Hawk, Polaris, Ryder and Demo were relaxing around their campfire over cups of 'coffee'. The chickens had been boiled until the flesh was soft and had literally fallen off the bone into the pot, saving them the trouble of deboning it; all Hawk had had to do was fish out the skeleton with a knife. Adding the giblets (heart, gizzard, liver, etc.) had added iron and other nutrients too. The soup had been surprisingly good and filling, and Cam was right; there was plenty left. Head, innards, feet and other 'unusable' parts of the chicken was stored in a bundle made of the chickens' skins and body cavities, which Cam explained to Halloran could be used later as bait for fishhooks or traps for larger game; stiff quill feathers could be used as makeshift writing utensils later along with berry ink and tree bark for notes, and the smaller down feathers could be put inside boots and jackets if the weather got cold. Halloran looked impressed and gave them full credit for the exercise.

Warren's team had chosen to simply spit their chickens and roast them; but someone hadn't been to clear on how to roast and some portions were plainly burned. Halloran marked them down on wastage—the insides of the chicken had been left as 'waste' and hadn't been used, depriving the men of valuable iron and other vitamins in the organs. Team A had figured out what Hawk's team was doing, and had boiled their chicken, but hadn't left it in long enough (they hadn't managed to catch their chickens in time to do a thorough job of cooking them) and they also hadn't really paid that much attention to what Cam had collected to put in it, even though she'd carefully spread out everything she'd used in an effort to subtly 'help' the other teams.

Hawk was elated when Team A came over to congratulate them on their technique and results. Warren's team came over to study what they'd done too—with the exception of Warren. Hawk watched the guy studying Cam across the mess hall that evening, and decided he needed to keep a careful eye on him—Hawk was still not sure Warren hadn't known what Walker and Harper had done.


	12. Chapter 12: R&R

**Chapter 12: R&R**

_Clayton: I showed the little flute you sent to Charlie. He said to tell you that 'when one of the People make an instrument like this a little part of the maker's soul goes into the craftsmanship. It's irreplaceable.'_

Clayton closed his eyes and sighed. He'd thought something like that would be the response, but he had hoped…

_He said to tell you that the flute is made of cedar, and it was already flawed; the tree got a virus and made the wood susceptible to cracking. He says the flute itself can't be replaced or repaired, but he did say that if you offered her—he seems to think the maker is a woman, from details in the carving—a ready-to-carve cedar branch, a 'blank', it would mean a lot to her because it would indicate you respected her beliefs and traditions. I took the liberty of telling him to go ahead and find an appropriate blank. Clayton—is the owner a woman? Charlie seemed to think the maker was a she, because there was a doe carved on the flute, but you didn't specify a gender in your letter, and there aren't many women in the SERE Level C training so I wondered. Let me know. Allie._

He grabbed a sheet of paper and started to write.

_Allie: Charlie was right, the owner is female. Her name is Cameron Arlington, she's in Ranger school, recommended for the SERE C training by Base Commander Dixon for potential posting in an RRD. Right now she's on an LRRP posting but she wants an RRD, and Dixon says she'd be excellent at both. She's on my SERE team here—it's a long story, I'll tell you when I get back—and I've seen her skills. Impressive doesn't even begin to describe her._

He paused a moment. He wanted to ask Allie to find out what she could about Cam, but would that be an invasion of privacy? He finally made up his mind.

_She has an impressive skill set, most of which I gathered are because she's part Iroquois and she spent five years—between the time she was eighteen and the time she was twenty-three—living on a reservation in Western New York. Her father was Iroquois; her mother was Korean, and she grew up at Osan AFB in Korea until her father died in a flight accident when she was ten. She's an excellent dancer—I'll tell you how I found out about that when I get back—but there was some sort of accident when she was fifteen that ended her hopes for dancing career—she won't talk about it but she was headed for the New York City Ballet before whatever it was happened. She made it clear she doesn't want to discuss her life in New York City between the time her father died and the time she went to live on the reservation, so I'll respect that._

He knew Allie would read between the lines. She, Shana, and Courtney teamed up together to check up on women for the Joe project; the careful wording of the letter would let Allie know that Hawk considered her a potential candidate but would leave it up to the three of them to check up on and decide whether to recommend Cam for the project or not.

_Ask Dash to check on my desk in the 'potential recruits' file and pull the file of a guy named Tony Walker, from the 75__th__ RRD. He was here going through SERE-C with us until he was discharged two days ago—also a long story and one I don't want to commit to paper here for confidential reasons. He's got a serious—and I mean SERIOUS—chip on his shoulder about women in the military in general and women forward of the line of troops in particular—but he does have a good record and excellent leadership skills and charisma, and I would like to see if working with you three will cure him of that. If we could get rid of that chip on his shoulder he'd be an excellent soldier. _

"Hawk?"

Clayton looked up from his letter to see Demo and Ryder walking toward him. It was Demo who'd spoken. "Sir, I know today's supposed to be an R&R day, but do you suppose we could get together with Cam—Polaris—and talk to her about teaching us enough of her language to set up a clandestine communications method for the RTL?"

He'd completely forgotten about that. "That's an excellent idea. Let me finish writing this letter and we'll go find her." The two men nodded and withdrew, and he returned to what he was writing.

_If you and Scarlett and Cover Girl are willing to tackle trying to turn his attitude around, I'll sign the paperwork to have her sent to Joe base. Tomorrow starts the Survival and Evasion week, and then we have the RTL week, so if you write don't expect an answer back for about two weeks. Clayton._

He stuck the letter in an envelope and sealed it, then stood, stretched the kinks out of his back, and headed outside. At the sight of him Demo and Ryder drifted away from the basketball game they were watching and joined him; they waited outside the Admin building just long enough for Clayton to drop the letter into the outgoing mail bag, then the three of them headed for the women's barracks.

She wasn't there—and in a fit of paranoia Clayton tapped on the lid of her footlocker to make sure she wasn't in there—then they headed outside. "Where could she be?"

Inspiration hit him—the meadow where her flute had gotten broken. "This way," he said, and the two men followed him.

His guess was correct; she was in the meadow. And she had her swords with her. "Wow," Ryder said, clearly impressed; and Hawk and Demo stopped too, the three of them pausing just inside the fringe of trees.

Her music player was on its armband around her arm, half-hidden inside her sleeve; the headphone cord, he assumed, was tucked inside her shirt. She had her swords unsheathed, one in each hand, and the bright steel was flashing in a complex series of double-handed moves to either side of her even as she turned, twisted, and jumped. She was wearing the same yoga pants and t-shirt from the morning Clayton had found her dancing, but she wore those black sneakers; and Clayton now saw there was an odd flat platform on the toe that allowed her to stand on the tips of her toes just as she'd stood in those little pink ballet shoes.

She was apparently dancing to her music player; pauses seemed to be rhythmically timed, jumps seemed to come in a pattern, and despite the amount of concentration it must have taken to keep her body and swords moving and coordinated, she had a smile on her face and a light in her eyes he'd only seen that one time when he'd caught her dancing. And he privately wondered again what accident had kept her from that dancing career she'd obviously wanted and would have been so good in.

The music finished, and she stopped, panting. Hawk was about to step forward and announce their presence when she said, "I know you guys are there watching me. Come on out, I'm done." And she stood, scrubbing an arm across her sweaty forehead, then sheathed her swords as they came up. "Sorry, guys. I just wanted to get some practice in before we left for the Survival and Evasion phase tomorrow. It's going to be two weeks before I can play with them again."

"Play? You call that 'play'?" Demo was as close to awed as Clayton had ever seen. "You could probably have killed someone while you were 'playing'."

"That's kind of the point," she said. "Troops on an RRD have a little more leeway in what tools and weapons they can carry with them, and I plan on never having to part from my swords, ever. That means if I am ever in a survival situation, I will have my swords and I need to be able to effectively defend myself in close quarter combat. That's why I use music; the fast pace hopefully will simulate a regular combat situation."

Clayton was dying to introduce her to Scarlett. The two of them would probably have a lot in common. And he could see the two of them fighting each other on the mat in the Joes' dojo…

She dusted her hands off. "Okay. I know you guys didn't come here to discuss my sword skills. So spill it."

"Well…I don't know if you'd be willing to do this, but…during World War Two the Allies used a code based on the Navajo language to defeat the Axis powers decryption efforts. I was wondering if you knew enough of the Iroquois language to teach us some basic escape vocabulary so we could do a clandestine 'escape plan' from the RTL at the end of next week."

She looked at Clayton in astonishment. "That's a really good idea. Unfortunately, the problem with that is that there's no way you'd be able to memorize our words; they just aren't structured for a quick lesson." Demo groaned, but she held up a hand. "Wait. I didn't say that we couldn't do it, I just think that a spoken vocabulary wouldn't work. But the Iroquois have what could be called a 'basic battlefield sign language'; they're hand gestures that our braves use when they are tracking dangerous prey through the woods and silence is essential."

"Dangerous prey? What's dangerous in New York?" Ryder blinked.

"We do have a pretty hefty black bear population up there. And we have strict laws about white men trespassing on reservation land to hunt. Occasionally a bear will become troublesome, and the towns will ask us either for permission or they will ask us to take care of the nuisance animal—there was an incident some years back when a bear was snatching people's dogs and cats and eating them, and there is always the occasional idiot who gets between a mom and cubs or who otherwise provokes an attack. Although we understand such incidents aren't completely the bear's fault, the laws say it has to be eliminated, so if the bear is on our reservation we send out teams of warriors to hunt it. If it is dangerous we'll hunt with rifles and firepower, but lately the younger braves have embraced traditional methods of hunting and stalking, dispatching and killing, so we hunt with bows and arrows and spears as well as gunpowder and rifles."

She looked amused at their wide-eyed awe. "It's not as dangerous as it sounds. Younger braves will perform recon, scouting ahead to find the bear and flush it to the main hunting group, and they shoot it with arrows and spears on the way. When the main group gets it they'll finish it off with rifles and gunpowder because we can't afford to let it get away to kill more people, but the brave who gets his arrows closest to the bear's heart wins tremendous prestige. And if you can get a spear or an arrow and kill it without the main group needing to resort to gunfire, it's a huge bonus and you get your choice of the parts of the carcass—and you get the fur. It doesn't happen _often_; they move fast for something so big and they can be hard to hit—but it _has_ happened."

"Did you ever go on one of these bear hunts?" Ryder looked suitably impressed.

"A couple of times." She shook her head. "But we're not discussing the hunt, we're discussing the hunt language. Here. Let me show you."She moved her hands in a deliberate gesture, which Hawk, Ryder, and Demo imitated. "That's 'run'. Now this is 'go'…"

By the time they heard the faint tones of a far-off bell calling them all to evening mess Hawk, Demo, and Ryder had the basics of Iroquois hunt language down. "You know, I have something like this at my base," Hawk said as they started to walk back to camp; Cam said she had to drop off her swords in her barracks before going to chow with them and Ryder and Demo voted to wait while she did. Their solidarity pleased Hawk. "One of my soldiers—his name is Snake Eyes—was in a helicopter accident a while back that destroyed his vocal cords. He can't speak, and AMESLAN can sometimes take too long to convey an idea, so Snake Eyes and another of my officers, Scarlett, have worked out an abbreviated sign language to use in combat situations and taught it to the rest of my soldiers. It's unique to our unit but completely effective."

"I can imagine." Cam tilted her head. "So what is your unit? I know your MOS is a former Ranger like us, but I've heard you mention a 'project' several times and you're obviously not rank and file like the rest of us." He stopped walking, nonplussed, and she put her hands on her hips, looking at him challengingly. "You've asked me questions about my background, so I can ask about yours."

Demo and Ryder sensed there was something more to that than they were aware, but they stayed silent, watching the exchange between Cam and Clayton. Clayton looked at them for help, found none there, and finally sighed. "I'm the commanding officer for a top-secret government project. I don't know if Walker talked about it, but he was supposed to be joining my project after this training wrapped."

"That G.I. Joe project he was going on about?" Cam blinked. "You're the commander of _that_ project?"

"Yeah. I can't give you any other details, it's classified, but yeah. _That_ project." He saw her face go smooth and impassive, and hurried to reassure her. "Cam. I have both women and men on that project. In fact, my girls help train the new recruits. If a soldier has a problem with that, they don't make it. My girls are pretty good at making their points—literally when necessary. Scarlett is one of the best on base with hand to hand—she's a martial arts expert, as well as an expert with crossbow and bladed weapons of all kinds. I depend on her evaluation of new recruits; if she doesn't think they're good material, they're reassigned. I'm very picky about who I bring onto my project; she's even pickier. I respect her and her gender, and she's never let me down. That was one of the reasons why I chose to work with you when Hilton handed out team assignments."

Cam's face resumed its regular expression, though now there was some humor in it. "She sounds like an interesting person."

"She's definitely interesting." Clayton sad dryly. "I would love to get her to meet you…but I'm afraid of what kind of monster I'd create if the two of you became friends."

Cam shook her head. "No thanks. No top-secret macho military projects for me, thank you very much." Her smile belied her words.

He didn't smile back. "I'd like you to think about that. I think you'd be an incredible asset to my team—and we take only the very best, so that should tell you how I view you. Instead of working for years in Ranger support waiting for the higher-ups to acknowledge your skills and talents and place you where your talents can best be utilized, you could make an immediate difference to my project." He held up a hand as she started to open her mouth to speak. "No, don't say anything. Take some time to think it over. Keep in mind also that I haven't seen you out on the field yet so I also don't have a measurable idea of how valuable your skills are, and I'm making this offer based on what I've seen so far and on the strength of Dixon's recommendation—the very fact that you're here means you're exceptional. All three of the girls on my base were excellent in the SERE-C training and that's the kind of mental and physical toughness I expect from all my soldiers."

She closed her mouth, appeared to think that over. "I will think about it," she said finally. "I won't promise anything. But I'll think about it."


	13. Chapter 13: Day 1

**Chapter 13: Day 1**

"All right, people, listen up."

Despite Clayton's worry that he would be awake all night worrying about the start of this phase of training, he'd slept soundly and was fully prepared for anything when he woke up the next morning. They'd been told to report to the classroom directly after breakfast, without packs or any extraneous gear.

When they got there the desks had been pushed aside and there were twelve packs of identical shape, size, and, he guessed, contents and weight. Instructor Halloran, colonel Broadview, and Base commander Hilton stood there, waiting for the recruits to snap to attention in line before calling their attention.

"All right, here's how this is going to go. This next week is structured the same as the Level A training; you're going to split up into your teams and head out. Each one of you will get one of the packs you see here, and each one has the same contents. Your team leader will be given a satphone for emergencies, and the team will be given a checkpoint you need to reach by a certain time and a certain day; you'll be traveling both by night and by day, and as you are all aware, a company of the 82nd will be searching the woods for you. Each member has been promised an extra day of off-base R&R for each team they find, so believe me, they're motivated. The locals in the area have been informed of the training exercise and if they spot one of you, they've been given the base's number to call it in. They've been promised a $20 reward, and that will be coming out of your pay—split four ways since each team has four members. As well, if a civilian spots you and the 82nd finds you on the strength of that report, you flunk. You'll start off with three hundred points; for each infraction of the rules or not following military protocol you'll lose twenty-five points. When you get to zero points you fail."

Broadview stepped forward. "You are only permitted to take with you the contents of your pack and your clothes. The pack contains no food; you are responsible for finding that yourself. The canteens are full, but you are also responsible for refilling it once the initial supply is gone. To ensure that we are on equal footing and no one is hiding anything, like a knife or other non-authorized, non-issue tool, you will all now strip to the skin and allow your clothing to be searched for any non-issue items."

Clayton started to comply—and froze. Beside him, Demo and Ryder did the same, and they shared a glance, each one of them thinking the same thing. "Um…all of us, Sir?" Ryder said hesitantly. "We have a woman with us…"

"And she has stated that she wishes to be treated no differently than the rest of you. We will therefore comply with her wishes and treat her the same as every other soldier. Clothes off, trainees."

Clayton was about to protest, but he caught Cam's eye. She shook her head, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, and he understood. She didn't want them arguing on her behalf. Clayton bent to the task of removing his clothes. He was fighting with the laces on his boot when the room went suddenly, deathly silent. He straightened up, wondering—and froze.

Cam stood silent and at attention in her place in the line, between Demo and Ryder, her clothes neatly folded on the floor in front of her waiting for inspection. Her face was a coldly impassive mask. Her fellow trainees, however, weren't impassive. Neither were the instructors. And after looking at her, neither was Clayton.

Her body was hideous. Clayton recognized with some distantly objective portion of his mind that they were burn scars, the same type of burn scars that had destroyed Snake Eyes' face when the helicopter carrying him and Scarlett had crashed; but this was so, so much worse because so much more of her body was involved. The scar tissue started around her right knee, wrapped up her leg, covered her sex and her upper left thigh, completely covered her torso to just under her left breast but completely covered her right breast, then spread under her right armpit to just under her right collarbone. Her left breast was high, firm, clear cinnamon skin with a dusky nipple sitting perky on her chest, but in stark contrast, she had no nipple left on her right breast and no pubic hair at the vee of her thighs, just smooth shiny white scar tissue everywhere, and Clayton couldn't even imagine how bad the pain must have been while she recovered from it.

_Jesus_ _fucking Christ. I'll bet this is why she can't dance anymore._ There was no way she could have worn one of those skimpy ballerina's costumes with a body that looked like that. _They look like Snake Eyes' scars. Which means she was caught in a fire where some kind of accelerant was used. Jesus, Cam, what the hell happened?_

"Jesus Christ, Arlington, what the fuck happened to you?" Colonel Broadview was the first to speak.

Her voice was a flat monotone. "There was an accident and I was burned. Sir."

"Jesus." Broadview tore his eyes away from her torso, grabbed her clothes, and hastily checked all the pockets, then shoved her clothes back at her. "Get dressed."

She hurried to comply.

By mutual unspoken agreement, neither Ryder, Demo, or Hawk mentioned it once they were dressed and had claimed a pack from the pile sitting at the front of the classroom. Each pack had a waterproof map, a compass, a canteen with a cup, ten feet of parachute cord, two fish hooks, a nail, a pencil and small notepad in a plastic Ziploc bag, a packet of water purification tablets, a flashlight, a small can of mosquito repellant, a poncho, and two extra pairs of socks.

Halloran came over with a satphone and a colored marker. He handed the satphone to Hawk, who stashed it in his pack as Halloran placed a colored dot on all their maps. "Team B, this is your first checkpoint. You'll get on the truck waiting outside and it'll take you to the starting point for the week's exercise, which is about six miles from this checkpoint. Your goal is to get to that checkpoint by eight o'clock this evening to meet Colonel Broadview, who will then give you your next checkpoint. Remember not to get spotted and not to get caught. Good luck."

It wasn't until they were on the truck, putting on camouflage face paint, that Demo said, "Cam—I'm sorry for staring."

Ryder said, "Me too."

"Me three," Hawk said.

Demo spread his hands helplessly. "It's just…we weren't prepared to see that kind of damage—Christ, no one could ever be prepared to see that kind of damage on anyone's body. I understand if you don't want to tell us, but…what happened?"

She looked like she didn't really want to talk about it, but then relented. "My aunt and uncle had a hunting cabin upstate. We were staying in it when it caught fire."

"Did…did they make it?"

She hesitated a long time, then sighed. "No, they didn't."

"How old were you?"

"Eighteen."

_So her aunt and uncle didn't make it, that's when she went to live with her father's people. I can see how living on the reservation would have been therapeutic after something that horrific._ Then another thought hit Clayton. _Wait. This can't be the accident that ended her dancing career because she said her lessons stopped when she was fifteen. Something else happened between the time she went to live with them at ten and when she went to live with the Iroquois at eighteen._

_ What kind of injury would end a dancer's career? Hmm. I think I heard stuff about feet and legs, maybe she broke her leg or an ankle or something. I don't know much about dancing; never needed to. Hmm. But she dances fine now, she had those ballet shoes on in the barracks and she danced fine, so whatever it was must be fixed. Shouldn't it?_

"Clayton!" Cam's voice broke into his thoughts.

"Hmm? What?" he shook himself out of his reverie.

"You kinda weren't there for a minute."

"I was thinking." He fixed her with a penetrating look; not his patented, legend-on-Joe-base Hawk Glare that scared the pants off new recruits, but one of those looks he gave his soldiers—most often Courtney and Wayne when they went on a crawl and came back with that guilty look that meant they'd gotten in trouble and knew they'd be headed for mess duty when he found out. It was a look that said he knew they were hiding something but wouldn't make an issue about it unless or until it came to his direct attention, and it had the same effect on her that it had on his soldiers; she looked slightly uncomfortable, though she didn't fidget or squirm like Courtney usually did. "You know what I was thinking about—but I'll reiterate what I said earlier, I'm not going to pry anymore. It's your business, not mine, but I am still willing to listen if and when you want to talk. Before we part ways at the end of the month, I'll give you my direct number at my base and you're welcome to call me whenever you want to talk. Not as a commanding officer, but as a friend." _God knows you need one, you sure don't have any at your base or this baggage you're carrying would have been unloaded long ago. Dixon, what the hell kind of outfit are you running over there that one of your most capable Rangers is neither understood nor appreciated, and isolated? Cam's got to be incredibly lonely. _Like Scarlett before he'd added Lady Jaye to the project.

"Thank you, Clayton." And he could tell she meant it.

"Now. Since we're going to be hunted by the 82nd I think that will be an excellent time to practice this hunt sign language Polaris taught us. Let's run through what we know so far…"

By the time the truck dropped them off they'd established their base of knowledge for the sign language, and added a few more signs to their repertoire. Hawk hefted his pack as the sound of the truck's engines receded into the distance, leaving them alone. He felt isolated and uncomfortable. Looking at Demo and Ryder, he could tell they felt the same.

Polaris, however, apparently didn't have the same feeling. She stood for a moment, breathing deeply of the thick, heavy green scent in the air, then blew it out all at once as her spine straightened and she turned to them. "Right. Let's get our maps out and figure out where we are."

Ten minutes with the maps and they figured they were roughly six miles due west of the checkpoint dot. "Let's get going quickly," Polaris said as she hefted her pack. "If we're being hunted they'll start at our last known position and we don't want to be here when they get here."

"We're supposed to have two hour's head start before pursuit comes after us." Ryder reminded her.

"That's what they _said_. But Broadview also said he was going to apply maximum combat realism to these scenarios, and in a real hostile territory situation they might already know we're out here. And Broadview has it in for me, so I wouldn't put it past him to have cut a few corners where our team is concerned just to try to get me to drop out and all of you to fail. Your success is my responsibility." She pointed. "I felt the truck's engines straining to make that climb up a steep grade, so we're going to have to travel downhill to make our checkpoint. It's not going to be easy, and I smell rain in the air, so let's get going."

_She has good leadership skills_, Hawk admitted when she finally called a halt for lunch. Throughout the morning she'd urged them to take sips of water whenever they stopped for someone to relieve themselves, and although she herself stepped behind bushes when she had to go, she didn't take any longer than they did, didn't use it as an excuse to relax or rest. At her urging they dug small holes and covered them up afterward. "I don't know if the 82nd is going to have dogs or not, but I don't want to take any chances. Bury scent trails with dirt. Don't use your hands to dig the hole, either; find a stick. Grab one end only so the scent of your hands aren't on the end that touches the ground, then keep the stick." She chose a stick for herself, taking the nail from her pack and scoring the end she was holding with the point so that she would know which end was which; they did the same.

They came on a pile of what she identified to them as deer droppings around midday. "Scrape the soles of your boots around in that. It should mask the human scent even more and confuse a dog."

Ryder balked. "Polaris, they never said they would have dogs."

She shook her head impatiently, stepping in the deer droppings and scraping the soles in it. "And I wouldn't put it past Broadview to cheat like that. If you want to take the chance, then don't. The conditions he set for us were that you would all flunk if I dropped out; but if you dropped out we'd still be live."

"And that wasn't _fair_!" Ryder forgot his distaste in his indignation as he stepped forward to coat his boot soles with deer droppings. "Rules that apply to one should apply to everyone!" Hawk couldn't agree more.

She sighed as she shifted her pack on her back. "Ryder, life isn't fair. Least of all for me. I learned that very early on; and once I stopped fighting it and just accepted it, accepted that the rules for me were different for everyone else, it got easier. Accept the things you can't change, but try to change the things you can even when it seems hopeless, and never give up. Because when you give up the ones who make the unfair rules win."

"And you never let them win, is that it?" Hawk asked quietly.

"Sometimes it's not a matter of winning. Sometimes there is no clear win; it's heads they win, tails, you lose. Any which way you go you lose, but you learn in the process and you outlast, outwait, outwit. Never, ever give up. That's the win, that's the secret of life."

"They say the secret of life is happiness, and being loved."

She shrugged, stomping a bit in the wet dirt to grind dirt into the deer dropping mess on the bottom of her boots. "Maybe for some. But for some of us, love isn't the answer." She started off on a diagonal course down a steep downhill slope.

They blazed a switchback trail down the steep hillside, and Hawk reflected that if it weren't for Cam's ever-present cheerfulness he'd probably be feeling wet and cold and pretty depressed. Ryder too, looked like he was feeling a bit of it, but whenever they stopped, Cam would tell them the progress they were making, or she would distract them from their thoughts by pointing out things along the side of the trail they were blazing. Once she stopped and pointed upwards, to a hole in a nearby tree, and the four of them stood transfixed as two small, fuzzy bundles with huge round eyes blinked owlishly down at the four of them. "Owls," Cam said. "They're awfully cute when they're little." They started walking again, and she added, "Until you see them bite a mouse in half."

Their canteens were empty by the time the sun started to set, but Cam encouraged them. "Just a little farther. We're almost at the rendezvous site, and once we get there we can take turns finding food and get some water."

"Where? We're in the middle of the forest and there's no stream here!" Demo protested.

"It's raining, Demo. As long as it's raining we have water. We just have to figure out how to get it into the canteens." From anyone else it might have sounded patronizing. Cam, however, sounded like she was giving practical lessons to a boy scout; matter-of-fact and informational. "There. There's the rendezvous point." In the gathering darkness, Hawk saw a strip of red duct tape wrapped around the trunk of a tree. "We were supposed to meet Broadview here at twenty hundred, and it's just a little shy of nineteen now. We have roughly an hour to build the required hidesite. That's plenty of time." She sounded satisfied.

There was just enough daylight left for Cam to rig a sort of canopy with two of the ponchos and multiple sticks out of the side of the hill below the marked tree. The purpose of the ponchos was evident when rain collected in the middle of it and dripped down the sides; she positioned a canteen at the point of one poncho and in what seemed like a very short time, the canteen was full. They all took turns drinking from one as the others filled, then refilled the first one as they all took their now-full canteens. She then filled a pot of water and built a small, smoky sort of fire on a small pit dug into the ground, then put the pot down over crossed branches and disappeared into the forest.

About ten minutes later she came back with her hands full of greenery. "More wild carrots and potatoes," she told them. "It's a little dark to hunt for meat—I should have made a bow and some arrows while we were traveling to hunt but I didn't even think about it. I'm sorry. It's going to be boiled mashed potatoes with onion tonight. Tomorrow I'll get us some meat. I tried for eggs but it's really a bit late in the season for hatching, and any eggs I may find are likely going to be rotten so I didn't try it."

They heard Broadview coming before they saw him; the noise of him tramping through the underbrush was a sharp contrast to the quiet of the woods. She instantly threw dirt on their tiny campfire pit, and Demo stood to go meet him.

:Wait,: she used their sign language to gesture to him, and Demo and Ryder nodded. Hawk got the feeling she was planning something at the glint in her eyes before she slipped into the darkness, but her plan wasn't clear until he saw her climb the tree, creep out onto a branch directly over Broadview's head, and fall on him as silently and gracefully as she had jumped out of the tree to greet Clayton that first afternoon at Camp Mackall.


	14. Chapter 14: Night 1

**Chapter 14: Night One**

Broadview's yell of total surprise was sweet music to Hawk's ears as he, Demo, and Ryder jumped out, swiftly enveloped Colonel Broadview, and dragged him into their hidesite with them. By the time Broadview got his cover back on top of his head, Cam had slid silently into the tiny 'tent' with them. "Ssh, not so loud, sir," she said with a completely straight, serious face. "There are enemy soldiers out there looking for us. Where is the next evacuation site?"

Broadview stared at her; then at Hawk, who felt the corners of his mouth twitching and tried to fight it. His dumbfounded look traveled to Demo's poker face, and then to Ryder, who completely lost it and started laughing—but silently—and finally he muttered, "God damn it, Team B, you scared the shit out of me! There are bears in these woods and I thought you were one of them! I didn't even know you were here—I wasn't expecting you until later!"

"No sir, we're just a team of Rangers trying to avoid enemy patrols." Cam's voice was completely earnest and serious. Only the twinkle in her eye gave her away. "You weren't expecting us until later?"

Broadview stared at Cam; she stared back, and his eyes were the first ones to drop. "I figured you'd slow the guys down," he muttered finally, yanking his cover off his head and shaking the dirt off it, then plunking it back down.

"You figured wrong." Cam's eyes weren't twinkling anymore; they were hard and angry. "Sir, just because I have tits doesn't mean I'm weak. Or stupid. We women have to work twice as hard to get anywhere in this military, and it's even harder in the Rangers because women haven't been assimilated into it yet. I'm one of the first, and I'm determined to stick it out. You can't change that determination, Colonel, I have reasons of my own for wanting this and they go deeper than you wanting me out of here. Do yourself a favor, stop fighting it and just accept the fact that I'm here and I'm going to stay here. Sir."

Broadview stared at her. "Goddamn," he said finally, but his eyes were the ones who dropped first, and Hawk knew Cam had just won the first battle in this psychological war being waged between her and the Colonel, and he silently applauded. _Round one to Cam._

And then she dropped her gaze, and when she raised them again, it was to offer one of their wild potatoes—wrapped in wet leaves to 'bake' over their campfire, to Broadview. "Have a potato, Sir. My people always offer a guest refreshment when a guest drops in. It's guest-right."

"Well, I guess that fits me, I did drop in. Literally. Though I did have some help," Broadview's face cracked in the first smile Hawk had ever seen as he unwrapped the wild potato from its leaf. He inspected it suspiciously for a moment, then shrugged and bit into it. He chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed, regarded the potato suspiciously, then said, "This is not bad at all. Some of the organic food nuts in town keep telling us we need to try some of the local vegetation but I always thought it was some of the local Cherokee mumbo-jumbo."

"Native Americans got along just fine on that mumbo jumbo before we even came along. It was their country first," Hawk pointed out reasonably as Cam set about building up the fire to where they could see and got out their maps. "Now, if you want to just give us the next rendezvous point, you can go back to camp and your comfy bed while we rough it out here."

Broadview bent over the map with his colored marker and made another dot. "Okay. I expect to see you at this point two mornings from now. You'll spend the day here at your hidesite and move through the dark tomorrow night to get to the next rendezvous point by daybreak."

"Got it, Sir," Cam nodded, and Hawk suppressed a sigh of relief. He'd just realized how soft he'd gotten jockeying a desk; he was feeling every minute of his forty-plus years and his joints felt closer to fifty. "See you at daybreak two mornings from now." He nodded and disappeared.

The fire had dried their clothes somewhat, and the hill provided some protection from the wind; the smoke from their tiny campfire kept away all the bugs. He was therefore surprised when Cam threw dirt on the fire and said, "Let's break camp. When I was collecting the vegetables I saw another good spot for a camp about a quarter of a mile back."

"But we're comfortable here and I was just about to get dry!" Demo protested.

"And my knees hurt. I'm not as young as I used to be." Hawk glared at her, but she was unfazed. "Sir. Broadview knows where we are. The 82nd knows that Broadview was supposed to meet us here. They can't get us while we're talking to him, but once they see him moving away they'll figure we're here and come get us. We have to break and we have to move. They'll expect us to head in the direction of the next rendezvous point, so we'll backtrack and take a direction they won't anticipate we'll move in."

It made sense. Hawk heaved his aching body up out of the comfortable dirt hollow he'd found and shuffled his pack onto his shoulder. Cam took the two ponchos down with amazing rapidity by the simple expedient of pulling up the anchoring sticks and wrapping the ponchos around them; then she kicked dirt onto the tiny campfire she'd just painstakingly built up and they headed out.

They were barely at the top of the hill when they heard movement below; Cam's hiss from the dark ahead of them warned them to be silent. There were flashlights from the direction of their former hide, and in the high beams they saw soldiers in regular fatigues.

The 82nd. They'd come _that close_ to failing. If she hadn't insisted, they'd have been caught.

He stared back up the hill toward Cam, who put a finger to her lips to indicate silence; then the four of them climbed the top of the hill to find another campsite for the night.

The new campsite she'd found was on a hill, like their last one; unlike it, though, it was a small flat table of earth jutting out from the side of a much larger hill. Setting up camp this time was easy; with the sticks already in the ponchos, all that was needed was to ground them and dig another campfire pit. Hawk had to admit the ingeniousness of the idea as he and Demo set about digging that pit. It could easily be doused with a handful of dirt, the fact that the fire was below ground level made it that much harder for someone to see it, and by setting it just inside the poncho 'tent' they could get the warmth without choking on the smoke.

"We need to set watch in case the 82nd comes back." Hawk announced firmly. "Polaris, Ryder, you two get some sleep while Demo and I take first watch." Cam and Kenny nodded, and moments later both were asleep; Hawk had done that deliberately because he knew Kenny wasn't used to this—if it hadn't been for Cam's encouragement and distraction techniques Ryder would have been miserable that day—and because Cam had expended a lot of energy scouting ahead, picking the campsite, and surprising Broadview, and he absolutely wanted her to get some sleep. Moments later both were out.

"You like her, don't you, Sir?" Demo said after a minute of quiet, as he and Hawk stared at the fire and listened for any sounds of pursuing soldiers.

"Excuse me?" He hadn't really been paying attention to Demo.

"Cam. You like her." He flushed as he realized what he'd said. "Not…not like that, Sir. But you like her skills and her personality and her toughness."

"Yes, I do. She brings a lot to the team, and she's going to be a valuable asset to whatever unit gets her in the end. Walker was an idiot; if he'd trusted Base Commander Dixon's recommendation that he work with her, between his leadership skills and charisma and her knowledge and abilities, they'd have been unbeatable." He looked at the younger man. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, you walked her back to barracks after each meal, it was practically a ritual, and Warren said you were playing favorites with your team and that made you a poor leader."

Hawk's exclamation wasn't complimentary, though he kept his voice low to avoid disturbing their sleeping team members.

Demo grinned, teeth flashing whitely in his dark face. "That's what Ryder said to him, Sir. You weren't playing favorites. We figured that since everyone made such a point of excluding her, you were making a point of including her so she wouldn't feel so…isolated and lonely. I had a quiet word with her former teammate, Valverde. She was sort of the odd one out at her base, too. I mean, Dixon liked her, but he didn't try to make a point of forcing her teammates to include her; if they worked with her a little more on stuff maybe things wouldn't have happened the way they did, when Walker and Harper locked her in her footlocker." Viciously, he added, "I'd like to lock them in a box and let them see what they put her through—after all she's already been through."

"The scars?" Demo nodded. "I'll tell you, that took me by surprise too. I've never seen that much damage on someone's body before. One of the soldiers on my base was injured in a helicopter crash some years back—his face was very badly burned and the scar tissue actually looked like Cam's."

Demo nodded. "I'm a munitions expert, so I know. Burning fuel is an accelerant and that leaves very distinctive burn scars. What I want to know is why didn't whatever hospital she was in do some repair, at least make her look a little more normal? She's got to be self-conscious as hell about how she looks and there are surgical procedures that would have helped that. Surface re-pigmentation so the white scar tissue would look a bit more natural, cosmetic reattachments so her …chest…looks a little more symmetrical, and Christ, sir I couldn't help noticing she looks like a doll between her legs. There's nothing left there. How does she…get intimate…with anyone? Does she? Is there anyone?"

"Would you?" Hawk asked.

Demo rubbed his chin as he thought about it, then finally, reluctantly, said, "Sir…I wish I could say yes, but truthfully…no, I couldn't. She just looks…too different. And…it's not just about my pleasure, Sir, it's hers too. Does she feel anything? Can she feel anything?"

It was something Hawk hadn't even considered and his heart ached at the thought. "I don't know, and I don't think we should be talking about this anymore, Demo. It's personal and we have no right. Let's go over some of that sign language she's teaching us."

They were supposed to wake the other two members of their team after four hours for their watch, but he and Demo agreed they could both go another few hours, so it wasn't until about five in the morning (they'd set up their new hide site around ten the previous evening and Ryder and Polaris went to sleep around eleven) that Hawk and Demo woke them for their turn at standing watch. Cam opened her eyes, stretched, squinted at the gray, predawn light outside their hidesite, and then looked accusingly at Hawk. "You didn't wake us up when you were supposed to!"

He shrugged unapologetically. "Command decision. Now roll out, we're tired now too." Despite the fact that his clothes were still damp, stretching out on the two ponchos she'd laid out on the ground to keep the water in the ground from soaking into their clothes produced no additional discomfort, and he was asleep in minutes.

He would fuzzily remember later that he'd woken a few times during the day, seen Ryder by the little campfire, and gone back to sleep. It wasn't until the sun was starting to set that he woke fully, stretched-and immediately started groaning as sore muscles not used to working this hard protested.

Cam was instantly beside him, smiling as she held out a canteen cup with some kind of steaming liquid in it. "I hope this is that coffee substitute," he told her, and without waiting for her to answer, he tossed back a mouthful.

And choked. "What the hell is this stuff, Polaris?" he growled, spitting to try and rid his mouth of the bitter taste.

"If you'd given me a chance to speak I would have warned you. It's willow bark tea. It's like natural aspirin, so your stiff joints and aching muscles should feel better after you finish it. I made it as strong as I could and still be palatable—couldn't find any wild bees for honey, more's the pity—and everybody's had their dose. I wanted to make sure you got enough to take the edge off because we're going to have to start as soon as we're done eating. I tried to let you sleep as long as I could, but we're going to have to leave while there's still light out to navigate. With any luck we should be at the new rendezvous point by about four or five; that should give us enough time to set up a new hidesite."

Hawk made a face, but tossed back the rest of what was in the canteen cup. He did have the beginnings of a headache that threatened to become astronomical if he didn't do something about it, and she hadn't been wrong yet.

By the time they'd finished their 'breakfast' of berries, nuts, leftover wild potatoes and carrots, and two fat rabbits she'd spitted and roasted, he had to admit that he did feel better; his muscles and joints didn't hurt as much and he was clear-headed. Enough to notice that she'd added to their arsenal of weapons. "What's all that?" He pointed to what looked like a bundle of sticks wrapped in the rabbits' skins.

"I took the time today to make a bow and some arrows. Found some good straight oak back down our trail and made a bow, then scrounged sticks for arrows. Hardened the points in the fire and chipped out notches behind the head so it doesn't pull out of the prey. I tested them already and found them workable—that's why we have rabbit for breakfast." She smiled at his dumbfounded look.

"Been busy today, have you?" was his only comment as he tucked into the breakfast.

They struck camp, carefully detaching the ponchos from the sticks and rolling them back into the packs they'd come from, then Cam lashed the pointed tent sticks with a thick vine "Kudzu," she told them absently, and slung them on her back along with the arrows and bow. "We may need them later," she said by way of explanation, "And we don't want to leave anything with our scent behind." Their campfire was quickly buried and they were on their way.

Walking through the forest by night was different than doing it during the day. Things seemed to loom up out of the darkness very suddenly, it was hard to see rocks and debris on the forest floor, and several times Hawk was positive they were lost. The rain, fortunately, had stopped, and several times Cam climbed trees to get up above the leaf canopy over their heads and gauge their direction by the stars.

"We're close," she said finally just as the sky was showing the faintest hint of lightening. Hawk looked at his watch; five-thirty.

She noticed his look. "We're a little later than I thought we'd be, but we still made pretty good time. Seven miles mostly in the dark isn't bad. Now we just have to find our hidesite."

They'd been traveling downwards, from the foothills of the Western Carolina piedmont plateaus to the marshy swampy coastal areas; now as they reached the floor of the valley they were gratified to see a small clear stream with a sandy bottom cutting across the valley floor. The stream was fairly slow, so they walked upwards, against the flow of water, until they got to a shallow bowl valley cut against the side of a much taller, rockier hill. The stream was a waterfall up here, flowing downward, and the running water had cut deeply into the sides of the small canyon, providing sheltered space under the overhang that Cam declared was perfect for that day's hide site.

She drove the sticks into the portion of cliff atop the overhang; having to struggle a bit to do so, because the overhang was almost all rock. Once done, however, she hung the two ponchos from the sticks by the side, giving them a snug three-sided shelter with a roof over their heads, and she smiled in satisfaction. "Okay. Let's go meet Broadview."

"We're not supposed to meet him here?" Demo asked in surprise.

"No. I decided to establish our hide site far enough away that after he's gone we won't have to break camp so the 82nd won't find us. I should have thought of that last night before we all got comfortable; it didn't occur to me that the 82nd would backtrack behind Broadview to find us until after he'd gotten here. It was my mistake, and we went to a lot of inconvenience last night because of it." She shook her head, obviously disgusted with herself.

"Hey. We still didn't get caught." Hawk reminded her.

She shook her head again. "That's not the point. The point is that your success is my responsibility and here I'm making stupid mistakes that we can't afford to make, making you waste calories you can't afford to lose."

"Cam, you're only human. And I'm the team leader, remember?" Hawk said lightly, concerned about the fact that she seemed to be trying too hard, pushing herself too much. "You don't have to be perfect, Cam."

"Let's go find Broadview," she said abruptly, and shouldered her pack as she pushed past him. He rolled his eyes at this display of female stubbornness and they followed her.

They were ready for him when he came sauntering over to the red-tape-marked tree. It had been Ryder's idea, this time, to try catching Broadview in a snare; Cam tested the strength of the 550 parachute cord they'd been given, pronounced it too thin to actually take Broadview up off the ground, then worked out a ground snare that wouldn't take his feet off the ground but would definitely catch him. When Broadview came up, he stepped exactly where Cam had said he would step… and they had him.


	15. Chapter 15: Day 3

**Chapter 15: Day Three**

"We have to stop meeting like this," Hawk smiled broadly as the four trainees stepped around from behind the tree they'd hidden behind.

From where he stood, pinned to the thick trunk of an old oak, Broadview glared furiously. "Damn it, Hawk!"

Hawk wasn't quite sure how Cam had set that up. They'd only been given ten feet of parachute cord each, and she'd used all four bundles of it, but somehow she'd rigged it so that when Broadview stepped on a rock, a loop of rope had dropped over his head, pulled tight against his upper arms, and then another quick tug had anchored the cord to a tree. He glared in helpless fury now as he cursed at Hawk. "Let me out of this trap, trainee!"

The loop was a slipknot, and had Broadview really wanted to he could have gotten out himself. The point Cam had tried to make was that if she'd constructed the trap a little differently, the loop would have closed around Broadview's throat and strangling him would have been easy. From the look on his face as Cam silently deconstructed the simple web of rope, he knew it. When she had the rope off him and tucked away, he said gruffly, "Good thinking, Arlington."

She flushed with pride. "Thank you, sir."

"Where's your hide site? And your camouflage paint?"

"Hide site's back there so that the 82nd can't follow your backtrail and find us," Hawk said easily.

"Twenty five points from each of you for not having camouflage on, and another twenty five for getting here late and not having a hide site set up," Broadview said immediately, and Hawk straightened indignantly.

"We have a hide site set up!"

"But not at the rendezvous point."

"If we set it up here the 82nd will find us like they did last time!"

"That's not my problem if you have a team member too weak to carry her own share of the weight!"

Demo shouted hotly, "Take that back! She's been pulling more than her fair share of the load!"

"Stop." Cam's quiet voice cut through the shouting. "Colonel Broadview. I chose the hide site this time and I told them to build it away from the rendezvous point, so if anyone takes the blame it'll be me. Take the hundred points from my score."

"Twenty-five points from you three and one hundred twenty-five from Arlington." Broadview snapped curtly, but was there a faint trace of smug satisfaction in his voice? "Bring your maps here and let me mark your next checkpoint."

"No." Ryder crossed his arms. "Not until you even the score again! She might have told us to build it there but we were the ones who actually did it!"

"And I was the one who ordered it. She made the recommendation but I made the decision." Hawk's face was stone as he glared at the colonel.

Broadview rolled his eyes. "Fine. Fifty from the team leader and seventy-five from Arlington. Twenty-five from you two. Now bring your maps." His tone didn't invite arguments. "The weather is going to be really hot today, so we adjusted our plans. The teams will be resting in their hidesites today and moving at night."

The three men maintained a stony silence until Broadview left, then Demo burst out, "Son of a _bitch_! God damn _fucking_ son of a bitch, he's going to pick at every little thing until you don't have any points left and you fail!"

"Then I have to make sure I'm perfect." Cam's voice was flat as she picked up her pack.

"You can't be perfect, you're human!" Hawk shouted at her, exasperated by her stubbornness. "God damn it, Cam, stop trying to be superwoman all the time! You don't have to be perfect at everything!"

Cam froze for a long moment. When she finally spoke she didn't turn around, and her voice didn't even sound like her for a moment. "Can't show weakness. Can't show vulnerability. If you're weak they win." And without another word she disappeared into the forest.

Ryder and Demo were asleep and Hawk was sitting up when she finally returned to the hide site an hour later. By now the sun was well up, and the muggy, hot still air didn't help; the humidity was so thick you could cut it with a knife. She was holding an armful of greenery, and Hawk raised an eyebrow as she put it down. "What's this?"

"Lunch and dinner. We're not moving until dusk, so I took the opportunity to pick a little extra. And if I did everything right, we should have fresh meat this afternoon too." She flashed him a bright smile. "I took the cord we used to snare Broadview and remade it. If I'm really lucky we'll have deer tonight."

Clayton smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. "Cam…what did you mean earlier?"

"What earlier?" She looked up at him, puzzled.

"You said right before you walked into the forest 'If you're weak they win'. Who's 'they'?"

She shook her head. "I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did. You said 'can't show weakness, can't show vulnerability. If you're weak they win.' What did you mean?"

"I didn't say that, Clayton." She shook her head and started sorting through the greenery. "You must have heard wrong."

He was going to push the issue but decided against it. She obviously didn't want to talk about it. Instead, he pointed to a huge bundle of bright yellow flowers clustered on a lumpy, bulbous-looking stem. "What's this?"

"Pineapple weed." She laughed at his expression. "Yes, I know, but if you think about it, that's exactly what it looks like when the flower heads are tightly closed. It looks like a pineapple."

"What's it taste like?" He opened his mouth to bite on it experimentally.

"Don't!" she grabbed his wrist before he could put it in his mouth. "You're not going to like the taste. It's not edible."

"Then what's it for?"

For answer she pointed across the tiny hollow. "See that tiny waterfall? It's just tall enough for a shower. Pineapple weed, once you crush it and add water, acts a little like soap; it washes away grease and skin oils. And once you're dry if you rub more of the flower heads on you it acts like natural insect repellant." She pulled off her cover and unwrapped her braids from around her head, then pulled off the thin rubber bands she used to secure her hair.

"Um…you're not going to…"

A cloud passed over her face. "It's not like you haven't already seen me naked," she muttered, but sighed. "No, I'm not going to take all my clothes off. Today is going to be hot and the wet cloth next to my skin will help keep me cool. After I'm done I suggest you do the same. I'll keep watch while you bathe."

The cold shower did feel good, even standing in his clothes, and the pineapple weed foamed in his wet hair, giving off a faint scent of flowers and maybe just a hint of sharpness. When he got back to their hide site she grinned at him and said, "Let me go check my snare. It's almost time to wake Demo and Ryder so we can get our turn to sleep."

She disappeared into the forest, and he took a moment to smooth his wet hair down and relax in the sun. Really, apart from the heat, it was pretty here. And with their hide site this close to the stream, it wasn't even as hot as it would have been had they still been up on the hill.

He was just starting to wonder where she was when he heard a scream.

Demo and Ryder bolted upright at the sound of the scream, then raced with Hawk toward the sound. They tore around a bend in the high bank that formed the 'walls' of their little 'canyon', and stopped short.

Team A had stumbled on Cam's snare. And she'd been lucky; there was a wild pig caught in it. Hawk hadn't thought that the parachute cord would have been able to hold what looked like a hundred and fifty pounds of snarling wild pig, but it was caught fast. And apparently Team A had decided to try robbing Cam's snare.

With disastrous results.

The scream had come from Robinson. Unaware of the dangers wild pigs posed to humans, he'd tried untangling the pig from the web of parachute cord it was tangled in, and one of the pig's tusks had gored him in the lower left leg. He was crying in agony, writhing on the ground, barely two feet from the pig, who was snorting and scraping the ground with his feet, beady, angry eyes fixed on the helpless man on the ground.

Hawk felt helpless. They had no guns, no ammo. The small utility knives in their packs wouldn't do any good against a hundred and fifty pound grown boar!

A movement at the other side of the clearing caught his attention. And the boar's. "Cam!" he called, worried she might try to charge across the ground to help the wounded Robinson.

"I see him, Clayton," she said evenly, never taking her eyes off the pig. "When I tell you, start moving closer. Don't make a sound." She raised her voice so everyone in the clearing could hear her, from Team A, paralyzed with shock, to her team. "No one make any sounds. I want him to focus on me."

"For God's sake, Cam…" Hawk's voice broke as he imagined everything that could go wrong with what he knew she was thinking. She was going to distract the pig long enough for the others to get Robinson out of the pig's charging range—but that would put her in danger.

She put a finger over her lips for silence, and her hands flashed in the hunt sign language they were rapidly becoming familiar with. :Stop. Quiet. Wait. I'm okay.:

She reached over to the tree behind her, and he saw that she had what looked like an improvised spear; the tip of the branch had been sharpened and notched like the makeshift arrows she'd constructed. His heart leaped. Allie was experienced with javelins; he'd seen her embed the heads of them hard enough to stretch a rope sturdy enough to rappel on. If Cam could hit the boar with it, she'd never have to get close enough to risk being gored as Robinson had been gored.

She took a few steps closer to the pig, now speaking in what he assumed was Iroquois. Her language sounded mellifluous to his ears, but that was only a small portion of his mind; the rest was focused on the boar. Another few feet, and he would make a dash for Robinson.

:Stop! Wait!: her hands flashed imperiously, and he paused. That was when she made her move, streaking across the clearing to the tree the pig was anchored to. And as she ran, the pig ran after her, and the moment she reached the tree, scrambled up into it, she screamed, "Now! Clayton, _now_!"

Seconds later a groaning Robinson was safely outside the four foot radius around the tree that the pig could reach, and Cam was perched on a branch above the pig. And the pig was furious. He'd completely forgotten about everyone else in the clearing but the annoyance in the tree above him, and he butted the tree, throwing his hundred and fifty pound weight against the trunk. "Damn it!" Cam howled as she clutched the trunk. "I picked this tree with the intent of getting a deer, not a stupid chunk of bacon!" She clutched the trunk as the tree shook again, and then lost her grip on the makeshift spear; it hit the ground about a foot and a half away from the tree trunk. And she swore in Iroquois this time.

There was nothing anyone could do. The pig was going to break the tree trunk at any moment, Cam would fall out, and he would gore and savage her. Clayton had heard of giant wild pigs killing people; it hadn't hit him until now just how gruesome that would be.

And them Cam moved.

She launched herself from the tree a scant half-second before the pig crashed into it; the swaying trunk launched her to the ground and she hit hard on her hands and knees, rolled…

And the spear was in her hand just as the pig bellowed in anger and ran at her.

She screamed. The pig bellowed. And suddenly the clearing was red with blood, and Clayton cried out helplessly as girl and pig rolled, tangled in the snare cord, moving too fast for anyone to see what was really happening. And then…

Silence.

It took a few minutes for them all to realize the pig wasn't moving anymore. And neither was Cam. Clayton and Demo were the first to react, racing for the lump of animal and girl, and Demo had his utility knife in his hand, hacking through the parachute cord until the main mess came free and they saw in shock that the spear had driven clear through the boar, and the bloody, pointed end was sticking up out of its back.

It took both Demo and Locke to grab the pig and the bloody end of the spear and pull the dead animal off the still figure lying under it, and Hawk howled Cam's name as he dropped to his knees beside her still body. "Cam. Jesus, Cam, come on, say something…" there was blood everywhere, and he couldn't tell how much of it could be hers and how much was the pig's… "Cam, Christ, say something, please!"

From her position lying on the ground, Cam cracked open one eye and grinned faintly. "That bacon's gonna taste really good."

Broadview didn't say a word to Hawk's team when the truck with the medics in it came to get Robinson, but Halloran demanded a full explanation of what had happened, and everyone was only too glad to explain the entire gruesome battle in full gory detail. Cam rolled her eyes and tried to protest when they told of her heroic efforts to save Robinson, but the bump she'd taken to the back of her head (there'd been a rock mostly buried in the dirt under the tree and she'd hit her head while wrestling the pig) was being checked by a medic, and Broadview snapped harshly, "Speak only when spoken to, Arlington!" and she actually shut up as she stared at him in indignation.

"It wasn't anything anyone else would have done if they'd known how, Sir." Cam said finally, shrugging off the fingers of the medic officer and climbing out of the truck to stand at attention. "I'd been lucky enough to be on a bear hunt once and that was how it was killed, so I knew it could be done."

"But you stopped to help a fellow trainee, even though he wasn't on your team," Halloran said. "That showed a measure of selflessness and a willingness to risk your life for a fellow officer. There's not many that would have done that…I don't know if I would have." He looked at the still body of the boar. "All right, Arlington, hop in the truck and we'll take you back."

"What?" Cam stared at him. "Sir…the training exercise—"

"You're not dropping out?" Halloran looked at her disbelievingly.

"Not for a little bump on the head," she scoffed.

Halloran looked at the medic, who just shrugged. "There's no concussion, pupils normal. If she wants to continue she can."

"Of course I'm continuing," Can snorted as she gestured to the dead pig. "I didn't kill that stupid chunk of bacon for nothing. I'm going to enjoy eating it."

Halloran threw back his head and laughed. "All right. For your selfless act I'm going to give you a little reward. The 82nd won't commence its search operations until tomorrow morning, which is when the exercise will officially resume. You get a break for the rest of today and tonight. Team A and B will share that pig. Have yourselves a roast, and enjoy camping tonight." He saluted them and the truck carrying the injured Robinson and the silently glaring Broadview disappeared off into the afternoon forest.

The trainees cheered.


	16. Chapter 16: Day 4

**Chapter 16: Day Four**

Clayton absolutely insisted she take it easy, so she gave them instructions on how to field-skin and butcher the pig while sitting beside the stream chewing on a strip of willow bark ("Because," she confided to Clayton, "my head hurts like hell," but she refused to let him call the medical wagon back.) There was some consolation in knowing that Robinson wouldn't fail; he'd get a medical discharge and sent back to his base and would have a chance to try the course again in a year, but Clayton somehow got the feeling that if Cam got a medical discharge Broadview would find some way to block her return and she would never make it back, so he stifled his immediate impulse to call a medic and have her taken back forcibly if necessary (which is what he would have done if it had been Allie or Shana or Courtney or, God forbid, Liv or Alex) but this was not his camp and his base and these were not his rules, they were someone else's, and no matter how unfair he thought those rules were, he didn't have a choice but to follow them.

So Cam took it easy, giving them butchering instructions and letting them cut and disembowel, and then Demo insisted both Cam and Hawk get some sleep while they cooked. One of the other guys on Team A, Richie Lewis, had been raised on a Georgia farm and they had slaughtered pigs, so he took over directing the carving and cooking so Hawk and Cam could sleep. She curled up on the ground and was immediately asleep, exhausted from her exertion of the morning, and Hawk himself wasn't much better either, so he followed her into sleep too.

They both slept the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. While they slept, Team A moved their hidesite to the opposite side of the stream from Hawk's team, and they took advantage of the pineapple weed Cam had found to have all of them a good wash under the tiny waterfall. "Leave some for her when she wakes up so she doesn't have to go find more," Demo cautioned everyone. "I'm sure she'd like to wash all that boar blood off her and out of her clothes when she wakes up." General approbation at that.

Early afternoon found huge cuts of pig sitting on a couple of small fires, and the cooperative efforts of five people had dug a pit a short distance away from the verge of the stream and the ribs were now smoking in a buried firepit. Two guys took turns standing guard and turning the spit on which the hams were roasting—they hadn't put too much effort into conserving and saving because there was so much that no matter what they did it wouldn't 'keep' for long. Before she went to sleep Cam had insisted that the bacon be cut into strips and set aside for breakfast, which they all agreed with.

Although the day was still hot and muggy, everyone felt much better after a bath (however unusual the 'soap' had been to some of them), the firepit in which the ribs were smoking provided enough smoke to keep the mosquitoes away, and the small canyon, thanks to the stream and the cool watery mist kicked up by the waterfall, was cool. Altogether it was hard to remember they were on a field survival exercise; at the moment it felt like a pleasant camping experience. So it was a quiet, happy camp that was abruptly disturbed that afternoon around four when they heard the sound of bodies crashing through the underbrush.

Cam and Hawk were almost instantly awake, followed by Demo and Ryder, and then the rest of Team A. "The 82nd isn't supposed to resume their operations until tomorrow morning," Cam whispered to them."

"I'd be suspicious if that snake Broadview had promised that, but seeing as how it was Halloran who said it, I'm inclined to trust the man." Hawk stepped out of their hidesite and waited.

Moments later there was a shout, and another minute saw Warren, Stanton, Blasetti, and Valverde following the bend in the stream. Warren came to a stop in front of Hawk. "Colonel Broadview and Sergeant Halloran called a suspension of the exercises for today; they contacted my team via the satphones and told us what happened." He swallowed. "I came to ask if we might possibly share some of the wild pig your team killed; we haven't had much luck finding food and water and we're tired and hungry."

"You got balls, I'll fricking give you that!" Ryder burst out. "After the way you've been treating us and our team members, to come and ask a favor now!"

"Ryder. Stop." Cam stepped forward, and Warren's eyes widened; probably in reaction to the dried pig's blood all over her fatigues, tangling her hair (which had mostly come out of their braids) and streaking her arms and face. "We have plenty and Halloran did call a truce. So we will offer him guest right and space and food." Her tone showed none of the disgust Hawk was feeling at Warren's bold request. "Come and help us eat this stupid chunk of bacon," she added with a smile as Stanton and Valverde lowered their packs with a sigh. "I'll go and find more of that pineapple weed so you can have a wash." She turned and looked at the pile of greenery, which had been depleted since a lot of the onion and garlic and wild carrot and wild potato had gone into preparing the pig. "Oh. There's still some left."

"We saved it for _you_," Lewis piped up. "Demo said we should leave you some so that you could wash."

"Thank you, Demo," Cam said with a bright smile. "But go ahead and let Warren's team wash up while I go find some more for myself."

"No. That's _yours_. They can go find their own, after the way they've treated you the last couple of weeks!" Demo said hotly.

"Demo. Go ahead and let them use it." Her voice had a slight edge to it. "I can find more. Besides, with all this stuff all over me, I think I'll need something stronger to get clean. Warren, please help yourself." She smiled, turned, and disappeared into the forest.

She was back barely half an hour later not only with pineapple weed, but also with a handful of what looked like bark shavings, sprigs of something that smelled like mint to Hawk, and a few uprooted flowers. "Don't touch the flowers," she cautioned all of them as they came over, curious to see what she'd found. "They're poison. I'd really like to go wash first." She headed toward the waterfall, and stopped short. "What on earth—"

"We set it up while you were gone," Ryder burst out. "We thought you'd like to take everything off and get really clean, so we untangled some of the parachute cord you used for the pig snare to tie ponchos to sticks and strung it around the waterfall so you'd have some privacy."

Her smile was radiant as she grabbed his shoulders and planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek. "Thank you!" and she grabbed a handful of the pineapple weed and headed for her long-overdue bath.

Her clothes were hanging wetly off her when she came wading out of the shallow waterfall basin, but Hawk noted that she had gotten most of the pig-blood out, and her long black hair hung loose, blowing gently in the breeze as it dried. He hadn't really seen her hair long and loose before; with her hair down she looked…different. Not pretty, in the way Courtney was pretty, but the length of her hair emphasized her high cheekbones and framed her face, and she looked subtly attractive, and he almost regretted it when she started to braid her hair and tuck it back up into her customary style.

She sat down and started to sort the other handfuls of greenery she'd brought back with her, and the rest of team A, curious, clustered in to have a look. She cautioned them about the flowers she'd brought back. "Don't touch those without washing your hands immediately afterward. The flower is called bloodroot, and it is poisonous even in small doses."

"Then why bring it?' Locke asked.

Cam washed the roots of the flower, then dropped it in her metal canteen cup and set it close to the fire. "Bloodroot has natural anti-plaque properties," and then at his blank look, she said, "Mouthwash. And toothpaste. Out here, your most valuable asset is your body and maintaining your physical shape. In the absence of modern toothbrushes and toothpaste and mouthwash, natural alternatives work just as well. And after enjoying that pig this evening, I think I'm definitely going to need it."

"Me too," Clayton said immediately.

"Yeah, I think most of us will."

Over supper that night—a supper that consisted of choice cuts of lean pork, roast potatoes and crunchy carrots, one of the members of Team A brought up the subject of hunt sign language. "Back at the clearing, when you guys spoke in sign language to coordinate rescuing Robinson from the pig. What language was that? I could see you signing but I didn't know what you were saying because it wasn't like any sign language I've ever seen."

Cam patiently explained to them about the Iroquois way of hunting rogue bears on the reservation, the younger braves' way of flushing out the animal so the older hunters could shoot it, and the basics of the hunt sign language when silence was a necessity. During her story, Warren's team drifted over to listen. They hadn't been openly hostile, but neither had they been particularly friendly; they'd constructed a small campfire and kept to themselves after claiming a generous portion of the cooked pig. "And so we decided that I should teach everyone the basics of hunt language so that when we get to the RTL portion, we can use it to set up a clandestine communication network, one that the instructors won't recognize and expect."

"That's a really good idea." Lewis seemed to have been elected leader of Team A in Robinson's absence. "Can you teach us some? We'll all be in RTL with you and it'll help if we can all coordinate."

"Of course. That's a good idea too." Hawk smiled at Lewis. The kid didn't have real leadership potential—not like Cam displayed—but he was doing his best, and you had to give him credit for trying. "Warren. Bring your team over and try your hand at this. Pardon the pun."

"Nah," Warren said, but Valverde and Blasetti looked at each other and seemed to make up their minds about something, and moments later the members of Team A were making room for two more across the other side of the fire. Warren and Stanton watched them go, but Warren didn't say anything and Stanton made no move to join them, and Hawk shrugged and turned his attention to the task of learning the sign language.

When they finally stood up, about an hour before dark, Team A had a good start on the basics, Hawk and his team now had a working vocabulary, and Hawk himself was fervently hoping that Blasetti and Valverde would be able to talk Warren and Stanton into learning a little. When time came for them to try escape from the RTL, it would definitely help if they were all on the same page. _God damn thick-headed…anyone can see right now that she's the best out of all of us at this._

"All right, I think that's about all I can cram into your head at this point," Cam said finally, smiling. "Mark, Tony, I recommend that you suggest to your team leader that you start moving your team back to your section of the course; otherwise it's going to take you that much longer to get to your next rendezvous point. Lewis, I recommend the same. Hawk. We need to get moving if we don't want to get caught when the sun comes up tomorrow morning. Let's split the rest of the pig so each team can take some with them because there's no way we'll eat it all before it goes bad."

With the meat split and the other teams well on their way out to their respective parts of the course (Warren had apparently decided to take advantage of the advice offered and moved his team back) Team B started to break camp. "The exercise resumes tomorrow morning, so let's start moving now. We have probably a good three hours of daylight left and we can get a jump on the 82nd. By the time they get here tomorrow morning we should be most of the way to the next rendezvous point."

"Cam. I'm going to override you on this. I see what you're saying about wanting to get started but they won't be at this point until tomorrow morning and I don't see the need to try and get through the forest at night. Not this night, anyway."

"But if we get started now we won't have to travel as fast. We can take our time."

"But you also need to take some time to rest and heal. Cam, twelve hours ago you were fighting a pig who weighs more than you do for your life—and I know you got knocked out, I saw how still you were when we got the pig off you. No concussion my ass. So we'll keep going until dark falls, and then we'll make camp. I want to stay ahead of the 82nd as much as you do but I also don't want to risk your health either. Without you we won't pass this course. I'm too old to be camping on the ground and neither Demo or Ryder knows woodcraft like you do. So I'm making a command decision; we'll move until nightfall, then set up a hidesite."

She looked like she was going to argue for a moment, then clamped her lips shut on whatever she was going to say. "You're the boss, boss," she said finally.

All the way there he kept calling out to her to slow down; she seemed to be moving very fast indeed, and he found himself straining to keep up with her. He deliberately slowed his pace; after a look at her, then at him, Demo and Ryder did the same, forcing her to slow down or risk leaving them behind. Hawk estimated they'd probably gone almost two miles in the three hours between the time they broke camp and the time he called a halt. Cam stopped too, albeit reluctantly.

"I know you don't want to stop," he said firmly. "But we also don't want to move unnecessarily if we don't have to, or risk breaking a leg or something in the darkness because you're too damn stubborn to slow down. If you want a command of your own someday, Cam, you're going to have to acknowledge that others don't have all the skills you do, and you'll have to learn to be patient instead of speeding onward. Now let's pitch camp."

She nodded curtly and helped them stake ponchos down to form a lean-to. They weren't going to be there long, just until daybreak, and they weren't going to have to scavenge for food or build a 'real' campsite, so they just piled into their hidesite. Demo and Ryder fell asleep almost immediately as Hawk and Cam stood watch, and it was well into the night before he finally heard her voice come out of the darkness. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he said, although he was starting to wonder if it really was. She drove herself harder than she had to, and she drove the rest of her team harder than they had to, and it was starting to make him wonder if there was something else going on with her that he didn't know about. "You're just… you're driving yourself too hard, Cam, and it's driving the rest of us crazy. You don't need to be perfect."

"You know, Hawk, intellectually I know that, but I've always driven myself to be the best at everything, since I was little and Dad died. I think maybe I didn't have him to lean on anymore, and I realized that the only one I can rely on is me, so that's how I approach life."

"And part of that includes trying to be a Ranger, because they're the best." She nodded. Clayton sighed. "I'm not gonna argue with you about it, Cam. But I think your Dad's death hit you pretty hard, and I think you might have some issues that you aren't aware of from that, and I think avoiding talking about them is part of what makes you drive yourself so hard. So I'll just repeat what I said earlier; I'm here to talk to if you need a friend. Okay?"

"Okay," she nodded.

And he had to leave it at that.


	17. Chapter 17: Day 5

**Chapter 17: Day Five**

Having learned their lesson the last time—Broadview was going to take points away no matter what they did—they built their hide site in full view of the rendezvous point. Cam was angry, and he could tell; her face got that smoothly impassive look she got when she was suppressing her emotions. When Clayton had first seen that look, it reminded him of Scarlett, locking down her emotions before a battle so she could focus; now, having gotten to know Cam, he knew that impassivity was a front for something much deeper—and he was worried that the longer she kept hiding her emotions the more that would hurt her in the long run.

After they got the hide site set up she went about, collecting branches, which she then used to camouflage the shelter. When she was done Hawk had to admit he was impressed; he stood by the rendezvous tree and looked at their hidesite and couldn't even see it. She also mixed some sort of concoction of berry juice and dirt and several different ground-up roots and created a green and brown camouflage paste, which the four of them used to re-camouflage their faces. The air had been uncomfortably still and hot, and sweat was running off of them constantly; Hawk was keeping an eye on their canteens and Cam had already taken them and slipped off to the nearby stream several times.

Their course had been roughly paralleling the stream they'd camped beside and roasted the pig 'The pig camp', Demo and Ryder were now calling it, as they trudged on through the forest and gnawed on smoked dried strips of pork. The only reason they hadn't just followed the stream was because the 82nd was following it too; apparently, as much as they wanted those extra days of R&R, they also weren't ready to sacrifice their comfort; it was noticeably cooler by the stream. And they were also probably hoping that one of the training teams would make the same mistake and they'd get that day off-base and not have to work for it.

Broadview showed up at about eight, and looked around for them. "Guess they aren't here yet," he muttered to himself, and sat down under the tree to wait. Hawk, Cam, Ryder, and Demo stood perfectly still; they could see him, but their backs were to a large kudzu bush and they'd wrapped kudzu vines around them. With the camouflage paint on, they blended in perfectly with their surroundings. Broadview actually spent several minutes staring right at Demo and never even saw the man.

Ten minutes. Fifteen. Broadview checked his watch, sighed. "Fifteen minutes late. Bet that concussion's slowing them down. Ten points from each one for being fifteen minutes late." And yes, there was satisfaction in his voice when he mentioned Cam's concussion. Hawk barely restrained himself from snarling in anger. Cam was right, Broadview had it in for her, and his agenda was driving her to try to be perfect.

Thirty minutes. Broadview sighed. Walked around the tree. Sighed again. Then picked up his radio. "Sergeant Masters."

"Aye aye colonel."

"Team B isn't here yet. Did you capture them?" Hawk's question was answered; Masters was the head of the company looking for the trainees.

"Negative, Sir, but we are tracking a team. Let you know in a couple of minutes if this is the team with the girl."

The radio lapsed into silence, and Hawk's team stayed still. Although they'd arranged to stay still only forty minutes, then break and let Broadview know they were there, something in Hawk told him to stay still, and he blinked twice, very deliberately, to let the team know to stay still. They understood and obeyed.

About ten minutes later the radio crackled to life. "Colonel Broadview, Sir!"

Broadview grabbed the radio. "Did you get the girl?"

"No sir, the team we've hunted down is Team A. We now have Warren and his team in custody and they'll be transported back to camp to start their RTL."

Broadview cursed. "Jesus, Masters, how hard can it be to track one skinny carrot-top, one black guy, one old man who can't even sit without his knees protesting, and a little girl dressing up in her father's clothes and playing at being a soldier?"

"Sir, you have to remember that that 'little girl' is a Native American and she's grown up with them, and she probably knows every trick in their book. She's not the pushover you think she is."

"She's not really an Indian, she's a half-breed, and for God's sake, she spent most of her childhood in a tiny New York City apartment! How hard can she be to find?" The radio squeaked, as if Masters had been about to say something, but Broadview cut him off. "Never mind. Get Team A to the RTL and then go find Team B!" he slapped off the radio with an angry hiss and pocketed it. 'How hard can it be to find four people in these damn woods?"

"Apparently really hard to find, because we've been standing right here in front of you for forty-five minutes and you haven't seen us yet," Hawk said, his voice calm, although what he was really feeling was an icy rage. Broadview wasn't playing fair, and while what he was doing wasn't technically against the rules, it violated the spirit of the exercise by bringing personal feelings into the training mix. Sadistic little bastard.

To his secret inner satisfaction (and, he suspected, to Cam, Demo, and Ryder's too) Broadview jumped about a foot in the air in startlement. "Jesus frickin' H. Christ!" he exclaimed. "Don't sneak up on a guy like that!"

"Stealth is one of the things we're supposed to be learning, isn't it?" Hawk said mildly, but it was that dangerous calm that everyone back on base knew masked a volcano of anger under it. "And besides, we haven't sneaked up on you. We've been waiting for you to acknowledge us. Speak only when spoken to, isn't that what you told Arlington?" He started stripping the kudzu vines off him; taking that as a signal, the rest of the team did too.

"Twenty points for being late—"

Hawk sprung his trap. "Uh-uh. Sir. We were right there the whole time waiting for you to speak to us so we could speak to you. If we'd moved you'd have seen us. Since you didn't, you know we were waiting there before you even came up, so you can't say we were late."

"Son of a…" Broadview was fuming. "Twenty five points for not having a hide site—"

"No, you can't even do that this time, sir." Hawk leaned over and dragged his pack out from under the branches and fronds that camouflaged their hide site. "Our hide site is right here. You just didn't see it." Broadview stared, speechless, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. Hawk reflected idly that he even looked a little like a fish; slightly thick in the middle, large round eyes.

"Give me your map." Broadview knew they had him, and he had to know they also knew that he'd called them names.

Hawk handed him their maps wordlessly, and Broadview stabbed his marker into the next rendezvous site. "There. Five miles, tonight at eight." He stormed away before they could say anything else.

"Let's get moving." Hawk was yanking at the stakes holding their hide site together, deconstructing it and pulling their ponchos out. "He's pissed that we heard him and he's going to pull out all the stops to get us now. I wouldn't put it past him to plan on following us and radioing in our position just so he can capture us."

"Well, it is getting towards the end of the Survival and Evasion week," Cam said quietly. "They have Warren, and I bet they have Lewis's team by now too. I'll bet they got Lewis early today, in fact; none of the guys on his team were particularly good at hiding and woodcraft."

"I agree. We're probably the last ones left. The longer we can stay 'live' the better off we'll be. Let's move."

They'd been walking nearly all day, and they'd taken turns on watch when they'd stopped at nightfall the evening before, so all four of them were low on sleep and they hadn't stopped to forage much, depending on the smoked pig meat in their packs. But even though they were tired and hungry, a sense of urgency had taken hold, and when they set out again, they were moving quicker than they had their first four days out.

At noon they stopped to grab water; the air was hot, still, sticky, and miserable, and even Cam was looking wilted and tired. Hawk sympathized (his knees really were aching) but they had five miles to cover, and knowing that the 82nd was no longer dividing their time between three teams and could concentrate on just one gave him even more of a sense of urgency. It was a false sense of urgency; he knew that sooner or later they were going to 'capture' his team; those were the rules. But he didn't have to make it easy.

Several times that day they heard crashing brush; once, when they were down by the stream refilling their canteens the 82nd passed right over them; they were only saved from discovery by ducking under a system of huge tree roots growing out the side of a hill; rain had eroded the dirt from under the roots and formed a tiny cave, and they huddled there, scarcely breathing, until the 'enemy' passed.

They stopped there for a while, cramped close together, chewing of some of the dried pork strips and drink their fill of water until the humidity and heat in the tiny root cave drove them back out. Quiet now, speaking only in the hunt sign language they had worked out, they threaded their way through the trees toward their rendezvous point until suddenly Cam stopped and motioned them together. Speaking in a voice hardly above a whisper, she said, "It's the end of the Survival week. They have to capture us now. What do you want to bet they're waiting at the rendezvous point?"

It made too much sense. Hawk blew out his breath. "I think you're right. So how do we do this? Do we get to the rendezvous point and just wait?"

Demo said, "Sir. If they were really the enemy and they had us cornered we'd be expected to take out as many of them as we could before we surrendered. So let's behave as if this really were an enemy situation."

"What do you suggest we do?" Hawk asked.

Demo's teeth flashed whitely in his face as he gave them a wolfish grin. "Take as many of them out as possible."

The 82nd were easy to spot once they were up in the trees. Knowing that there was only one team left and that team was heading for their next rendezvous point had given them an air of unhurried casualness; they knew they'd get their team…if not now, then when they got to the rendezvous point. So when one soldier who'd lagged a little behind looking for a suitable bush to relieve himself didn't return right away, they didn't really pay much attention.

It wasn't until the third man didn't return from the bathroom that they realized their numbers were dwindling. The eight man team was down to five when they suddenly realized three of their comrades hadn't come back from the bathroom, and they spent an hour backtracking to find first one, then another, and another lying hogtied under a tree, their mouths stuffed with grass to keep them quiet. And even then they didn't worry much; they ribbed their three comrades about getting snowballed by a team of four trainees, and turned to continue their journey to the rendezvous point.

But the journey kept giving them unexpected surprises. A tree fell, seemingly of its own accord, even as they watched, blocking their way; they had to go around it in order to get by, and there were blackberry bushes on either end of the fallen tree, slowing them down as the thorns caught and imprisoned fatigues, hair, and covers.

A pit opened up under them and dumped four of them into a mudbath—groundwater ran high here. An earthen bank gave under them as they were skirting it, and three soldiers fell—one, when he got back up, cursed because he'd twisted his ankle. Another earthen bank gave way and dumped a soldier into the stream; falling branches clocked all of them on the head liberally. By the time they got to the rendezvous point, there wasn't a single person on the eight man team who wasn't bruised, scraped, muddy, wet, or injured in some way, even if only superficially. By that time they knew they were being hunted by the same prey they'd come to hunt, and they were torn between anger and humiliation at being treated like this and admiration at the resourcefulness of the team who had so handily turned the tables on them.

Broadview was waiting at the rendezvous point when Masters came up. "What the hell happened to you?" Broadview asked, astonished.

"We're the ones being hunted, Sir," Masters said tiredly. "In fact, if this were a real situation and those four were really the enemy, we would all be dead by now. Curtis, Alonzo, and Fuller were ambushed when they went to take a leak; if the enemy had really been after them we would have found them with their throats slit. Colombo there twisted an ankle when an earth bank by the stream gave way and put him, Curtis, and me in the water. Matthews, Moss, Regan, and Turner stepped on a camouflaged cover over a pit and fell in—if it had been a real enemy there would have been sharpened stakes in the bottom of the pit and they would have been impaled; fortunately it was just water, and not deep. We've been plagued by trees suddenly falling over in front of us and not having a way around it except through thorns; branches have fallen on us, and God knows how they did it but we even got crapped on by some damn birds."

Broadview was almost shaking with rage. "You can't take out a simple three man team—"

"Begging pardon, sir, but it is a _four person_ team. And that fourth person, no matter her gender, is proving pretty effective at steady attrition."

Brush crackled. Broadview spun, then turned back to Masters. "Hide. And get your guns out. Prepare for the capture." They'd been issued blanks for this part.

"You're late," Broadview snapped as Hawk, Cam, Demo , and Ryder trudged into the clearing. "Ten points for being late—"

Around the clearing gunfire rang out. They might only have been firing blanks, but the noise was just as deafening, and slowly Hawk, Cam, Demo, and Ryder held up their hands. "And now you've been captured. Your survival and evasion phase is over."

Survival and Evasion was over; now came the resistance training lab.


	18. Chapter 18: RTL Day 1

**Chapter 18: RTL Day One**

They re-entered Camp Mackall under very different conditions than they'd left it. It had taken most of the night to trek back to the camp from where they'd been 'captured', and Broadview hadn't stopped once; not even over the muttered complaints of the 82nd. The soldier who'd twisted his ankle when the earth bank Ryder had built of loose stone gave way, Colombo, was limping along, swearing silently to himself.

Hawk, Cam, Ryder, and Demo marched along, packs on their backs, fingers laced behind their heads. It wasn't easy to maintain the arm position with the weight of the pack on your back; by the middle of the night Hawk was gritting his teeth at the cramps in his arm muscles. Ryder had already put his arms down once and been hollered at.

The 82nd had their flashlights out, which _should_ have made walking easier; and it did, for Hawk, Ryder and Demo. Cam, however, had been singled out by Broadview from the beginning of the trip; he seemed to be quite clumsy, tripping on things and bumping into her unexpectedly, sending her stumbling off to the side into trees and thorn bushes, then yanking her harshly by the arm back into line. The excessive force used to yank her back into line would send her stumbling into some obstacle on the other side, and then of course that gave him an excuse to yank her back the other way, or yell at her. As the night progressed, Hawk had to bite his tongue more and more; nothing Broadview was doing was against the rules of the exercise, but the man was definitely letting his personal antipathy color how he did his job as an instructor.

Broadview 'stumbled' again, and sent Cam sideways; this time over a rock, and she brought her hands down off her head instinctively to catch herself before she hit the ground. Broadview grabbed the back of her pack, yanking hard; she nearly fell over backward with the sudden shift of weight, and ended up in the dirt. "Get up!" Broadview screamed at her, grabbing the front of her fatigues and pulling her roughly to her feet. "Hands on your head, you worthless piece of crap!" Cam silently and expressionlessly resumed her place in line, only to stumble again when Broadview 'tripped' and ran into her again.

They reentered Camp Mackall from the opposite side of the camp this time, and Hawk saw the women's barracks. He saw Cam give a single longing glance at it, obviously thinking of bed and a hot shower and sleep, but that was all; she stoically kept marching with them.

Actually at this point it was more like trudging; they shuffled along. The distance to their last checkpoint had necessitated a fast pace and their efforts at taking out the 'enemy' had sapped their strength, and they were all flagging. Hawk was feeling every month of his forty-plus years when they finally reached the 'POW camp' that was one of the features of Camp Mackall.

The 'camp' was surrounded by a stockade of chain link and barbed wire; there was a high guard tower above two long rows of outdoor chain-link cages, each one with a rusted tin roof over it. And as they'd expected, eight of the cages were already occupied by the members of Team A and C; Hawk's team _had_ been the last ones out in the field. They watched as Hawk's team trudged into the center of the camp and stopped at Broadview's direction.

On the ground in front of them were plain gray medical scrubs; no pockets, no identifiers. Next to those scrubs was a drab olive bag and a pair of cheap flat canvas slip-on shoes of the kind given prisoners in prison. "All right, arms down, packs down!" and Hawk heard a collective groan from each member of his team as they put their packs down. "Now strip out of those uniforms, put them in the bag, and put on those scrubs and shoes! Take everything off, right down to your birthday suit! Now, now, now!" They hurried to comply.

Hawk had just gotten his boots off and was about to climb into his scrubs when he heard one of the soldiers from the 82nd suck in a harsh breath, and silence reigned before the muttering started. He didn't bother to look up; he knew what they were muttering about, and he didn't want to make Cam feel any more self-conscious by staring at her again. The 82nd hadn't seen them strip in the classroom before they headed out, and so they hadn't seen the mess of scar tissue disfiguring Cam's body. It was lucky she didn't seem to be particularly self-conscious about them, just self-conscious about others' reactions to those scars. He knew Broadview was going to take every opportunity to parade her around the camp to work at that emotional vulnerability as he tried to break her.

"Shoes, you dumb -!" he heard Broadview bark at her, and even though it wasn't against the rules he wanted to protest.

Cam's voice was completely even as she said, "Sir. They won't fit. Sir." Hawk blinked. He knew they'd have to have gotten her measurements from her file when they started the exercise, so how could they not have gotten camp shoes that didn't fit? He knew she had very small hands and feet, but still…

"Then you'll have to do without, won't you?" Broadview gestured, and suddenly Hawk's vision was obscured when the soldier behind him popped a dark hood over his head. Moments later his hands were tied in front of him with rope and the bag with his old uniform was shoved into his hands, and the rope was tugged; his cue to walk.

The long rope was tied to the rest of his team; he could feel the vibration in the line as they were roped behind him. As they started to shuffle along, feeling their way almost hesitantly because they weren't able to see where they were walking, he felt two deliberate tugs on the rope from behind him.

Clandestine communication. A small, tiny effort, but an effort nonetheless. He gave the rope two tugs, a response; then felt two more tugs shortly thereafter. And another. All four of them were coffled together. He breathed out; they would get through this.

He heard the scuffle and the short cry from behind him, muffled and distorted by the hoods, a second before a giant tug on the other end of the rope sent all four of them off-balance. He had to grit his teeth again; the cry had come from Cam, and he was willing to bet she'd been tied at the end of the line so Broadview could torment her. His guess was proved correct when he heard Broadview bark, "You miserable -! You piss-poor excuse for a soldier, what the hell are you doing, dressing up in Daddy's clothes and playing soldier? Get the - up!" Vibration along the line, and they resumed walking.

He felt the sudden temperature change as they entered a building; the floor was cold flat concrete under his feet and walking was easier. For him, anyway. He kept thinking about Cam, with no shoes; surely they would find a pair for her to wear by the end of the week when they would 'escape' the POW camp and meet at a prearranged location, to be airlifted in a mock extraction operation back to Fort Bragg for their week of decompression, debriefing, and performance assessments—as well as mental health monitoring—before being able to return to their respective bases. At that moment, he wanted to go back to the bustle and frenetic pace of life at Joe base almost more than he wanted anything in his life; wanted the easy familiarity of the routine he'd established, the company of the soldiers who'd become his personal friends—hell, he was even looking forward to working out with Scarlett and having her put him on his back on the mat. He was even looking forward to the mountain of paperwork that would be waiting on his desk when he got back.

"Halt!" and they halted. From the concrete and the temperature, he guessed they were in phase 1 of the interrogation process; solitary confinement, then a brief initial assessment when the 'enemy' would determine if he was a sufficiently high-value target for them to expend significant time and energy on.

The temperature inside the concrete cell was cold, but not as cold as he thought it could have been. Apparently even the camp's air conditioning was having trouble keeping up with the hot, oppressive, muggy humidity that had hung over the area the last few days; he smiled grimly to himself as she stretched out on the floor. Jesus, but the cool air felt good, and even though he knew his bones and muscles would ache later from sleeping on the concrete, it felt good to stop moving for the first time in nearly thirteen hours.

He slept for what felt like only a few minutes before he woke to the sound of his cell door opening. A soldier popped a hood over his head, and he was escorted out of the cell, down some more smooth concrete hallway, and turned a corner into what he thought was a freezer for a moment before the hood was yanked off.

He quickly revised his assessment of the camp's air conditioning not being equal to the heat and humidity. It was freezing in here, and as he complied with a barked order to strip, he caught sight of the clock on the wall. Jesus, it was already almost noon! They'd gotten to Camp Mackall just after daybreak, surely it hadn't taken that long to process three other people!

But one of those was Cam. Broadview wouldn't have bothered to torment Demo and Ryder, though he might pick on Ryder a little, but he would have worked Cam over thoroughly. Hawk crossed his fingers and hoped that there had been two people in the room; Broadview was a professional soldier whose job it was to provide this training to others, but Hawk already knew he was bringing personal feelings into the training and while he probably wouldn't do anything to get himself dismissed from this duty, he was skating close to the limits of what the instructors were allowed to do to the trainees.

He complied with requests to turn this way and that as he was photographed—in addition to being able to record his physical condition coming in from the S&E portion of the course, it would also be used to establish a baseline. Normally he'd find this slightly humiliating, but at the moment all he could think of was that Cam would have had to be photographed too and that meant anything Broadview did later wouldn't be blamed on the S&E. Broadview would have to be careful that nothing he did would leave any marks beyond the normal bruises and scrapes all SERE trainees accumulated during this particular portion.

He sat in the chair he was told to sit, felt the cold metal handcuffs and shackles close around his wrists, pinning his hands behind him to the back of the chair. And then he waited. And waited. And waited. The temperature got to him; first goosebumps rose on his chilled skin, then he started to shiver, and he had to grit his teeth to keep them from rattling. Yep, the air conditioning was working just fine.

Two hours went by before the door opened and Broadview walked in. Alone. Hawk felt his heart sink at that, wondering if he'd 'interrogated' Cam alone, but there was nothing he could do about it now, though he would ask her about it later. "Where are my people?" he asked, trying to keep his voice calm and not shiver in front of the instructor.

"They're safe. They're in our custody. And you are—?" In keeping with the tone and intention of the exercise, Broadview was to try and get a secret out of Hawk; the location of his base. Each of the soldiers had a secret that they were not supposed to reveal; Joe base was Hawk's. He wondered what Cam's 'secret' was, then pushed that aside. At the moment there was nothing he could do for her.

"General Clayton Abernathy, United States Army. Service number—" and he proceeded to give Broadview the standard answer all captured American servicemen were supposed to give a captor; name, rank, service number. After he finished, he repeated, "Where are my people?" As a leader, your first concern in a situation like this was always your people. It was something that came naturally to Hawk.

"You have an interesting bunch there. Especially that little chink - on your team." Broadview was trying to get under his skin, trying to find a mental weakness, and Hawk smoothed his face into an expression of polite blandness. He couldn't quite manage the smooth impassive mask Cam could put on, but he'd been told he was a hard man to play poker with.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Maintain dignity, calm, poise. _If you're captured with a member of the opposite gender don't let them know you care because it will give them another emotional weapon to use against you._ Broadview had enough weapons to use against him and his team; Hawk didn't intend to give him any others.

Besides, what he was saying wasn't true. She wasn't Chinese, she was Korean, and only half, at that. From what he'd seen she pretty much considered herself Native American. And she wasn't a '-'; she was every inch as much a professional soldier as Hawk was, as Broadview was. Hawk remembered Beach Head saying SERE school was nothing but a way to screw with your mind; well, Hawk was not going to let it do that. He was growing to despise Broadview more and more; there had been soldiers on base that he hadn't personally liked, over the years; many of them. Some of them didn't get past recruit stage. Some of them did and turned into good soldiers. Some of them he never got around to liking completely at all, but he wasn't going to let personal dislike of someone color the way he treated them. Not like Broadview, who, despite all evidence to the contrary of what Cam's capabilities and skills were, persisted in disliking her for no apparent reason at all. Hawk couldn't stand men like that.

Broadview barked with laughter. "Fine. Have it your way." He leaned over the table. "I tell you, General, you may have gotten this far, but you're going to fail, ultimately. She's not going to get through this portion, I can guarantee you that."

Hawk let the cool mask slip, showing Broadview the cold steel look that was a legend on Joe base. "And I'll tell you, Colonel, if you set one foot outside the letter of the exercises I will bring charges against you on her behalf. You've already skirted really close to it with that little stunt you pulled on the way here; don't think we didn't notice you shoving her around." And he sat back and let the mask fall back over his face.

Broadview stared at him for a moment, then went to the door. "Guard!" One of the 'enemy' soldiers came in. "I'm done with this one. Get him dressed and take him out to the pens."

Hawk submitted to the hooding and the metal wrist and ankle cuffs. He felt the surface under his canvas shoes change from concrete to dirt, felt the temperature change from freezing air conditioning to hot muggy humidity, and blinked when they finally yanked the hood off his head and shoved him into the pen.

The pens were roughly about three feet wide, four feet long, and five feet tall. There were two rows of twelve on this side of the stockade, and two rows of twelve on the other side, for the SERE-A classes were always larger than this little group of twelve in Hawk's SERE-C class. They were deliberately constructed to be too small to stand up completely, too narrow to lie down in, and he groaned as he sat down with his back propped against the chain-link fence. Four days. Already it felt like years.

The rules were that they would have to put up with four days of this, then a window would open up for escape; an opportunity. It was supposed to teach them how to recognize an escape opportunity, how to take advantage of it, how to get everyone out, and then would come two or three days of how to survive out there with nothing, only your wits and what you could find or scrounge, and get to a prearranged pick-up point. At that point it was an exercise in airlift operations, how to manage an airlift evacuation, and they would be back at Fort Bragg.

He was exhausted, but he wanted to check up on his team first, so he cracked open an eye and checked the pen next to him. Lewis. On the other side, Warren. The pen behind him was empty, and he had a sneaking suspicion who was supposed to be in that one, especially when he saw Ryder two pens over and Demo one pen over on the other side.

He looked across the chain link to Demo, then mouthed, 'Where's Cam?' Demo shook his head, shrugged with a palms-up gesture. He hadn't seen her. Catching Ryder's eye, he asked the same question, got the same answer. Hawk closed his eyes, grimly prepared to get as much sleep as he could while he could.

It was going to be a long four days.


	19. Chapter 19: RTL Night 1

**Chapter 19: RTL Night One**

The sound of blaring sirens and loud music played over the camp's loudspeakers woke him out of a sound sleep, and he jumped for a moment, heart racing, until he came fully awake and realized where they were. The clock in the interrogation room had said noon when he'd left it; now he could see the long shadows across the dirt and knew it had to be about four or five. The rattling of chain link and heavy footfalls caught his attention, and he turned, to see two soldiers escorting Cam down the other row of pens to the one directly behind his.

Rage washed over him.

She hadn't been allowed to sleep; while they'd been sleeping she'd been subjected to forced physical training—PT—through the hottest part of the day. And she'd been forced to do it nude, to judge by the dirt and mud crusted on her legs from her knees down, and from her hands to her shoulders. The stark white burn scars on her body from knees to shoulders were the only part of her that was still free of dirt, although it looked like she'd gotten a vicious sunburn, to judge from the raw red-looking areas on her torso. No food and no water, apparently, either, to judge by her swollen lips and half-closed eyes. "Cam!"

One soldier yanked open the pen door, and the other one shoved her in. Not brutally, not roughly, though he could have been gentler; with the shackles still around her wrists and ankles, movement was inhibited and she didn't stumble in so much as she simply fell in, as though too exhausted to take another step. Her eyes were already closed as she hit the dirt, half-curled in a fetal position, and didn't move. One of the soldiers gently nudged her ankles in with the toe of his boot before closing the door and locking it.

"Cam." Hawk breathed, tightly controlling his fury as he knelt at the back of his pen, looking though the chin link to the semi-conscious woman. She lay still on the dirt floor, breathing shallowly and rapidly, eyes closed. He sharpened his voice, trying to reach her through that haze. "Cam. Cam, answer me."

Rage disappeared, to be replaced with alarm as she didn't respond, didn't seem to notice, or hear him. He forced himself to put authority in his voice. "Arlington. Attention."

For long moments, there was no movement. Then her eyes opened weakly, and she whispered, "Yes…sir…"

"Jesus, Cam…" there was no doubt in his mind now that there was something terribly wrong with her.

In the pen next to her, Anthony Valverde looked at Hawk. "There's something wrong with her, Hawk," he said quietly. And he wormed his hand through the chain link until he could reach the ankle that the soldier had nudged into the pen with the toe of his boot. "Let me see if I can get a pulse," he said, brushing off caked mud and dirt from her ankle with one hand, trying to find the large artery that ran down the inside of her leg. His eyes widened as he looked up at Hawk. "Her pulse is racing and her skin's burning up!"

Racing pulse. Hot skin. Eyes rolling, semi conscious, unable to focus. He'd seen something like this recently. Where? He looked down her body—and froze. There was blood between her legs.

Bloody legs. His mind flashed back, to the Columbian jungle, Olivia in the jeep beside him as he sped away from Cesar Velez's villa. His desperate pleas for her to _stay with me, baby, please, it'll be okay_, as she went through drug-related withdrawal, her skin burning up from hyperthermia…

He shook his head to clear it, and something else clicked as he started at that smooth expanse of shiny white scar tissue. Hyperthermia. It was not only drugs that caused it, it also happened when the body couldn't regulate heat, either by cooling fluids or sweating. Sweat. Cam had certainly done enough of it, her arms and lower legs were caked with dirt that stuck to her sweaty skin, except…

"_**Her burn scars**_!" He didn't even realize he screamed it aloud, or that there was an edge of panic in his voice as he realized what was happening. "Hey!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Hey! Hey!"

Around them, the other trainees heard the commotion and started shouting too, trying to attract the soldiers' outside the pens' attention. "God damn it. _**BROADVIEW!**_" Hawk howled at the top of his lungs.

Across the quad, outside the stockade, a door slammed open, and Broadview, Halloran, and Base Commander Hilton stormed out. "What the hell is this noise!" Hilton thundered, but Hawk drowned him out.

"**_Get her out of there now! She's hyperthermic!"_**

"What the hell are you talking about, Abernathy?" Hilton demanded as he gestured to a soldier to open the stockade and let him in.

Hawk clenched his fists. Jesus, couldn't anybody see what he was seeing? "Sweat glands don't grow back in scar tissue. Cam's been out there doing PT all afternoon!" Out the corner of his eye he saw a swirl of movement at the edge of the crowd of soldiers, but he couldn't spare the time to look; he had to convince them to get Cam under cool water as fast as possible.

"Our soldiers have been out there all afternoon with her, Abernathy, and they're fine." Hilton started to turn away.

"Damn it, Hilton, get your head out of your goddamn ass and listen to me! Arlington can't sweat like we do to regulate her body temperature, and the mud caked on the bits of her skin that _can _sweat won't let her vent heat! She needs—"

Water, water that he could _feel _was cool, suddenly sprayed in a fan into Cam's pen. He looked up in disbelief, saw one of the soldiers who had been part of the team hunting them—Colombo, the one who had twisted an ankle when they caved the stream's bank under him—stood there holding a hose on Cam's inert form.

Hilton looked down at Cam for the first time, then blinked as he saw her lying unresponsive under the hose. "Get the doctor. Quick!" he snapped to another soldier standing beside him, and the soldier flew off without even stopping to salute. Halloran looked at Hawk, then snapped an order to another soldier in a low voice, and moments later the soldier had Hawk's pen door open and Hawk's cuffs and ankle shackles off. He didn't even stop to think; he ran down the row of pens on his side and back up the row on the other side, and was by Cam's side in moments.

Her skin was hot and dry under the water. He tilted her head toward the spray, letting it wash the dirt from her forehead, face, neck, and shoulders, then tentatively reached out and touched the white scar tissue under her right collarbone. Thick, shiny, hypopigmented—white—because the second degree burn that had created the scar had penetrated the second layer of skin and permanently damaged the blood supply, destroyed the layer of tissue and subcutaneous fat under her skin, destroyed her sweat glands and made her unable to regulate her body temperature by sweating. No hair growth—she had no pubic hair between her thighs, and never would, because the follicles had been destroyed when her body had burned. This close, he could see she had no flesh there, just white scar tissue, and now he could see the blood was coming from a small orifice, the only feature on an otherwise smooth, featureless groin. Demo's words, from the conversation they'd had their second night out, came back to haunt him. _Does she feel anything? Can she feel anything?_ Looking at her, Hawk guessed the answer was no—the orifice left looked just large enough to allow her to eliminate waste and to have her period, which was what he guessed was happening here; she hadn't been raped because the surrounding scar tissue would have torn; the orifice wasn't large enough to allow a man inside her without considerable trauma—but he seriously doubted she'd ever feel sexual pleasure.

_Jesus fucking Christ, Cam, what the hell happened to you? Why in God's name didn't someone __**do something **__to help you when this happened?_ Because, knowing what had happened to Snake Eyes' face from burning helicopter fuel, and knowing what he looked like now under the mask he wore, Clayton found it absolutely impossible to believe that nothing could have been done to restore a more normal appearance to the body of an eighteen-year-old girl burned in a fire. He remembered the debriding process that left Scarlett sick with anguish and guilt because if she hadn't been trapped in that helicopter, Snake Eyes would never have gotten hurt; the months of pain, the surgeries Snake Eyes had gone through to rebuild what they could of his face, and although nothing could fix the destroyed vocal cords, he didn't look as terrible now as he had right after the accident.

Not that Scarlett even saw the scars anymore.

And Alex's body, terribly scarred from her horrific ordeal in the Congo, the damage done to her sex from repeated rapes and unimaginable sexual torture, but Doc, even without being an expert in feminine anatomy and feminine physical cosmetic remodeling, had been able to restore enough of the original appearance and functionality to Alex Cabot's body that she could enjoy a physical relationship with Ettienne, even though she would now never be able to have children. Surely there had to have been something that someone could have done to restore a measure of normality to Cameron Arlington's body after…whatever it was… had happened.

He was jerked out of his musings by a soft groan, and suddenly the jaw above where his hand was resting started to move. Cam's eyes didn't open, but her lips parted, and Hawk gently slid a hand under her head, tilting it upward so that some of the water could trickle between her swollen lips. And as she swallowed he saw the puffiness was slowly dwindling, coming down.

"Out of the way!" Came an imperious voice, and second later the camp doctor appeared. An older man, short but with a powerful sort of presence, hair silver, blue eyes sharp as he knelt to examine Cam. He stared nonplussed at her scars for a moment before asking Hawk crisply, "What's going on?"

"Hyperthermia. Her body was extensively scarred in some kind of childhood accident and she can't regulate her body temperature like the rest of us can because she has no sweat glands left on the scarred skin." Hawk estimated that about sixty percent of Cam's skin had been burned. "She was out on PT all afternoon in the heat and mud and dirt caked to her skin on the portions of her body that could sweat, and she couldn't release heat that way either, I think the only thing that let her hang on this long was that she wasn't wearing any clothes; if she'd been wearing clothes all afternoon she would…be a lot worse." He didn't want to say what they were all thinking; _she could have died_. Dear God, he didn't even want to think that.

"Hmm. The swelling on her lips is going down, that means her body temperature is coming back down to normal and her blood vessels aren't dilating so much to try and pump blood to her extremities. Is she breathing normally?" He placed a stethoscope to her chest, listened. "All right, her breathing's back to normal, if a little fast still. Pulse is definitely slowing down." He gestured to the soldier. "Keep that water coming, son."

Cam had recovered enough by now to turn her head and follow the water; she gulped it avidly, as best as she was able. Halloran spoke a few words to one of the soldiers, and he ran off. Moments later, he was back with canteens full of water, which he started to distribute to the trainees in their pens.

Hawk took the canteen he was offered, but didn't drink it himself; the narrow neck would allow Cam to get more water than just swallowing from the hose, and so he pressed it to her lips. She swallowed greedily, choking a little when she took too big a swallow, but moments later was recovered enough to pull herself exhaustedly to an upright sitting position. "I'm all right now. Sir." But she was still leaning heavily on Clayton, her head resting on one side of his chest as his arms supported her carefully.

The doctor—Potter, read the name patch on the front of his fatigues—slipped an aural thermometer into the ear not pressed to Hawk's chest and took her temperature. "99.9. It's high normal, but it's normal. How do you feel?"

"Okay. Now." She started to push off Hawk's arm. "Sorry, Sir."

"No. Stay here. We'll get you to the infirmary. I have a stretcher on the way."

"No…no…I have to finish the course!" her eyes widened, and she started to struggle. "I have to…"

"Sit down, soldier, you're not going anywhere!" Potter barked, fixing her with a stern icy blue glare. "You could have died just now if Abernathy hadn't realized what was happening and forced someone to listen to him. I want you in my infirmary getting checked out, and this exercise is over for you—"

"No!" Cam cried, pushing away from Hawk and trying to stand on legs that shook only slightly. "No…you don't understand….I have to finish…I have to!"

Demo rattled the chain link of his pen gate, drawing everyone's attention briefly to him. "Cam's worried that if she drops out for medical reasons everyone on her team will flunk. I don't care. Her life's more important."

Hawk stood straight, "I agree with that."

From his pen, Ryder spoke. "Me too."

"Since when has the failure of one team member meant the entire team failed?" Potter's gaze was sharp as he looked at Halloran, Hilton, and finally settled on Broadview. By the way his eyes suddenly narrowed, Hawk figured the doctor had just realized who the real culprit was in the whole deplorable mess.

"The intent of this exercise is to apply maximum combat realism and to push the trainees into an understanding of the intent of interrogation…and how to defeat it. Better to bleed in training than to bleed in war." Broadview asserted stubbornly.

Potter looked at Broadview. Then he looked at Cam. "So you want to continue with this training exercise."

"Yes," Cam insisted, although she still looked pale, the sunburn on her skin still looked nasty under the bright fluorescent lights set on high poles at each corner of the stockade. Hawk realized suddenly as he looked up that sometime during this little drama, it had gotten dark and sunlight had been replaced by the stockade floodlights.

"You can practice solitary confinement in an interrogation cell." Potter indicated the multi-celled concrete bunker behind him. "In the air conditioning. With medical supervision. _Close_ medical supervision." Hawk's heart soared. With someone else involved in this phase of Cam's training, Broadview wouldn't have an opportunity to push the boundaries of the training guidelines. He had no doubt the doctor would make sure Broadview stuck to the strict letter of the guidelines; despite being a colonel, he was a doctor too.


	20. Chapter 20: RTL Day 3

**Chapter 20: RTL Day Three**

Slap.

Hawk gritted his teeth and returned to staring at the opposite wall. Broadview circled him pacing the small interrogation room, then stopped. "I will ask you, again. Where is your base."

"I don't remember." Another slap, this time harder.

They were going on the tenth hour of this. After Cam's brush with hyperthermia the night before, the trainees had been locked back in their pens with the loud noise, cacophonous music, and floodlights to keep them company, no doubt so their instructors could discuss the possible ramifications of what had just happened. Clayton had even managed to go back to sleep, even with the music and lights and noise; knowing that Cam was safe and would be okay took away some of the stress he was feeling, and his last thought before he fell asleep was that he hoped Allie and Flint would have been able to find out something about Cam. He was going to confront her about the accident and her extensive injuries, after the exercise was over, during their decompression week at Fort Bragg; he found it difficult to believe that she'd never been offered cosmetic surgery or corrective body remodeling to help her scarring.

"Up against the wall!" Broadview gave Hawk a shove that sent him stumbling against the wall. "Down in a duck crouch, hands behind your head!" He assumed the indicated stress position, feeling his knees creak as he did so. _I'm too old for this_, he thought as Broadview dropped a hood back over his head. _There should be an age limit on this course. Demo and Ryder and Cam are still young enough to bounce back quickly; I get the feeling I'm going to be taking aspirin for a week for my joints and muscles._

He did have to say, however, that the soldiers in charge of PT'ing the trainees did have some sympathy for his age. They didn't yell at him quite as much, didn't rush him quite as fast through the 'Nasty Nick', the obstacle course here at Camp Mackall. Of course, that could also have been due to the fact that they might have recognized that he was higher rank than they were; his authoritative tone when he'd yelled at Base Commander Hilton, his accidental omission of the Commander's title—and the lack of repercussion afterward—probably had been telltale signs.

However, if Broadview was here yelling in Hawk's ear, he wasn't in Cam's room, yelling at her. On his way into this interrogation room, although he'd been hooded and shackled, he'd heard Cam's voice, saying something low. It had been punctuated by a slap, which meant they were serious about letting her finish the course as she wanted, but they were apparently not taking it to extremes. He guessed that they'd return her to the pens after twenty-four hours of medical supervision while she underwent the interrogation exercise.

Broadview was asking the same question again; Hawk ignored him, listening to the steady drum of rain on the roof. When he'd woken up in the pens this morning the sky had been overcast and heavy, gray and lowering; it had started to rain halfway through the obstacle course, and was now going on the tenth hour of this. He wondered when it was going to stop, then chided himself. He didn't care if it rained the rest of the week here. That just meant that Cam wouldn't have to deal with the punishing heat when they forced her back out to PT, although he knew—he just _knew_—that Broadview would use her medical condition as an excuse to deny her clothing.

Broadview, apparently angered by the lack of response from his captive, and perhaps sensing that Hawk wasn't actually paying attention, punctuated his words with a slap that sent Clayton tumbling over. His feet and lower legs, on which he was precariously balanced, were starting to get that prickly pins-and-needles feeling that presaged circulation cutoff, and Hawk gritted his teeth again as he got back 'into position' at Broadview's barked orders.

"You think because of what happened last night I'm going to take it easy on the little cunt," Broadview's voice broke into Hawk's thoughts. "You got another think coming. As soon as she's off medical supervision—she'll drop out after what I'm planning for her. I promise you she will."

Hot anger flooded Hawk, followed shortly thereafter by worry. And he barely felt the pain of returning circulation when Broadview finally let him up after God-knew-how-many hours in interrogation. All he could think of was what Broadview would think to do to Cam that would destroy her determination but still be within the rules?

He stumbled on numb, aching feet back to the pens, guided by hands on his shackled wrists, and gratefully sat down in the pen as the hood was yanked off and the pen door closed. Ryder and Demo were in their pens, both clothed, looking exhausted and tired but otherwise okay.

The soldiers of the 82nd had set up a perimeter guard, pacing the outside of the stockade; Demo waited until the closest one had gone by before he raised his hands and used the sign language Cam had taught them. : You okay?:

:Okay,: he signed, and from his pen, Ryder also signed in the affirmative.

Demo waited until another soldier passed before he said quietly but audibly, "Hawk, Broadview's planning something for Cam. He told me in interrogation that he was planning something for her that would get her to drop out."

"He told me that too," Ryder affirmed from his pen, then all three shut up as another soldier passed, resuming their conversation only after this one had gone. "Sir…we told her that we don't care if we flunk, her health is more important, but do you think she'll listen to us?"

Hawk thought that over. "I don't know," he said finally. "I think if she were going to drop out she would have done it when she almost died last night." He wasn't going to pull any punches on this, hyperthermia and potential brain damage wasn't something to play with, and the instructors should have realized that certain aspects of the exercise would be injurious to Cam's health—it shouldn't have been his responsibility to point out to them that Cam couldn't sweat and therefore shouldn't be PT'd excessively. That was something the instructors should have known from looking at her records—surely someone should have noted her file about the extensive body scarring and designed her training accordingly. It was something Hawk was planning on bringing to the attention of someone in Washington, not because he wanted revenge for what had happened but because it was a major safety concern for trainees.

"That being said, however," he whispered quietly when the second soldier had gone past, "I don't know what Broadview has planned for her. I know after what happened he's going to be under close scrutiny by Potter and Hilton but there are plenty of things that can be done to break down someone emotionally and mentally." God help Cam if Broadview had gotten even a whiff of the emotional baggage she was carrying around; those were vulnerabilities that she couldn't afford, and he was going to recommend to her that she get some private counseling before those vulnerabilities turned into liabilities in the field. Really, it was something she should have figured out on her own…or her commanding officer should have taken time to get to know her, should have picked on those vulnerabilities before now and sent her to a shrink. If she had been one of his soldiers he'd have figured all of this out and she would have gotten medical and mental help way before now; he didn't allow anyone on his base to be isolated and alone.

He was interrupted by Warren being brought back; and one by one, all the trainees were brought back to the stockade and put back in the pens. Rain drummed on the corrugated metal roof of the pens, and the dirt square in front of the pens and interrogation barracks was turning into a giant muddy pig wallow, and even the soldiers of the 82nd were muttering as they brought food for the trainees; the first solid food Clayton had seen since they'd arrived there about forty-eight hours ago. It was some sort of oatmeal, probably mixed with various vitamins and electrolytic fluids to replace what they'd lost in PT that day, but it tasted bland and thick. Clayton, however, was so hungry by then that he didn't even mind the stuff, or that it was generously flavored with the rain that had fallen on it between Camp Mackall's mess barracks and the SERE POW stockade. They weren't given any utensils to eat with, but none of the trainees seemed to mind; it was food.

He was just finishing and the aluminum mess bowls were being collected when he heard Ryder gasp audibly from a few pens over; he looked up at the young man, then followed the direction Ryder's eye were pointed. And he gasped too, followed by Demo and a handful of other trainees a second later.

It wasn't the first time instructors had put one of the SERE trainees on a dog leash and paraded the trainee around the stockade; it was a common humiliation tactic. And it wasn't uncommon to see the trainee unclothed, either. It wasn't uncommon to see the trainee crawling, or duck crawling, through mud. It also wasn't uncommon to see this happening while it was raining.

But for some reason, seeing Cam nude on her knees crawling through the mud back to the stockade on the end of a dog leash spurred fury in Hawk. Yes, it was allowed; yes, it had been done before; but somehow this hit him like a punch to the gut. Whatever benefits she might have gained from twenty-four hours of medical observation had obviously been wiped out by intense PT; probably allowed by Potter now because it was raining and the wind was picking up and there was little chance of hyperthermia. The shackles on her ankles and wrists limited her movement to a slow crawl, and she was plainly exhausted. Soaked black hair hung heavy around her face and every line of her body spoke of exhaustion. In the rain and the gathering twilight the stark white burn scars on her body stood out more than ever.

"Stop." Broadview tugged on the leash, and Cam stopped crawling, immediately sinking exhaustedly to her elbows and knees in the mud. Broadview reached down, grabbed a handful of rain-soaked, tangled hair, and yanked her head up so that the other SERE trainees in their pens could see her. Her eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion, the rest of her face slack. "Still think a woman belongs out on the front lines? Look at her! How long do you think she would last if this were a real POW situation!"

Hawk opened his mouth to shout something, but to his extreme surprise, it was Warren, in the pen next to him, who spoke first. "This isn't a real POW situation. And she's not going to be forward of the front lines, so what you're doing right now is completely unnecessary, you sadistic little bastard!"

_Jesus Christ, he's actually sticking up for her! There's hope for him yet!_ was Clayton's incredulous thought as he looked at Warren. Demo and Ryder and Valverde were also looking at him, astonished by this apparent one-eighty and the fact that he would have cursed out an instructor.

Broadview sensed it, sensed the shift when the SERE trainees finally unified in their disgust at their captors. Felt them finally achieve solidarity, a oneness of purpose and a feeling of 'us against them', felt their loyalties shift from themselves alone to the group. Hawk felt it too, felt it when something 'clicked' among all of the trainees, even Warren, Valverde, Blasetti, the rest of Team A that hadn't liked Cam to begin with.

Broadview shoved Cam's head back down toward the mud, wrapped the dog leash firmly around his hand, then, before anyone realized quite what he was doing, his right hand flashed out, and there was a small shiny object in his hand. A penknife.

And he grabbed a handful of Cam's wet, tangled hair, and started to saw through the strands.

She screamed then, whether from shock that he was doing it or pain as the obviously dull blade sawed through the handful he held, Hawk didn't know. Inside the pens, the trainees were up against the gates, rattling them, shouting at Broadview to leave her alone. She was twisting, tears streaming down her face as she tried to yank free, tried to escape the dog leash clipped around her neck, but with her wrists and ankles shackled she couldn't escape as Broadview dropped the handful of hair he held, reached for more, and sawed leisurely through that handful too.

"Sir!" A member of the 82nd raised a protesting hand as Broadview went for a third handful of wet hair. "You made your point, Sir, stop it!"

"Shut up, soldier!" Broadview snapped, and the rest of the 82nd subsided, staring in shocked silence as Broadview hacked off the rest of Cam's hair with the dull knife. When he was done there were raw red patches on her scalp where the weight of her body had pulled locks of hair free from her head and she was crying helplessly, this last indignity coming on top of her exhaustion, her near-death experience of the night before, and whatever else Broadview might have done to her in the privacy of the interrogation room finally breaking her. She crumpled into the mud surrounded by severed locks of her own hair, exhausted, her whole body shaking with the force of her sobs.

Broadview reached down, unclipped the leash from around her neck. It had been a chain leash, and even though it hadn't been tight enough to asphyxiate her, he'd pulled hard enough a few times to choke her and there were red welt lines around her throat. "Put her in her pen," he snapped to the 82nd, and two soldiers hastened to obey. She barely moved, and Hawk noticed that they didn't hurry her, didn't drag her; they were…gentle. Well, as gentle as they could be with Broadview watching.

"Get her in her pen!" he shouted at them, then aimed a kick at Cam's side that sent her sprawling again, gasping as she got a mouthful of mud, spitting as she wearily tried to regain her balance with her wrists and ankles shackled. Hawk howled incoherently in anger; Broadview had just gone beyond the limits of what was allowed in the training manuals.

The soldier who had headed the team who'd been assigned to hunt the trainees went to his knees in the mud as Cam lay on her side, gasping for breath after the kick to her ribs, and moments later her wrists and ankles were free of the shackles. Hawk winced at the raw sores around Cam's limbs, but the soldier seemed to know they hurt and was extra gentle with her as he helped her up. Broadview's leg twitched, almost as though he wanted to kick her again, but the soldier gave him a dark, warning look as if to say, 'kick her again and see what happens to you', and Broadview apparently reconsidered it. Two soldiers gently helped Cam stumble into the stockade, then walked her slowly to her pen, letting her move at her own slow, shuffling pace, until they got to her pen. They opened the door and let her crawl in and curl up in a fetal position before quietly closing the door and locking it. Then they left.

"Cam. Oh, Jesus. Cam." The wetness on Demo's face wasn't all driving rain. "Cam, talk to us, Please." If the soldiers guarding the stockade heard his voice, pitched to rise over the sound of the rain hammering on the corrugated metal roofs of the pens, they made no move to stop them from talking.

"Cam. Come on, tell us you're okay."

It seemed like a long time later that she finally raised her head. "I'm sorry," she whispered, and her voice was weak and thready. "I know I'm being a baby over losing my hair." Her voice broke. "But it was the only thing left of me that was pretty. Everyone always said I had pretty hair."

"No, no, you're not being a baby at all." Hawk crouched against the back wall of his pen, trying to see through the darkness and driving rain. "That was an absolutely horrible thing to do." The whole thing was borderline abuse; PT naked with her body that scarred had probably subjected her to more emotional stress than they all had had to deal with so far; the dog leash and collar had been on the line; the kick had been so far over it he didn't have words for it.

"Jesus, Cam, you're bleeding," the quiet whisper came from Warren, in the pen beside Hawk. "It looks like he stabbed you in the back of the neck when he cut your hair."

"The knife nicked me," she curled up tighter. "I'll be okay. He didn't hit any muscles or tendons, so it's j-j-just a f-f-flesh w-wound." At first Hawk thought she was crying, then he realized she was shivering. Shivering violently. The rain was now almost horizontal, slanting in on the east side of the pens—the side Cam was on.

"Cam, can you sit up? Lean back against this corner here? Hawk's on that side of you, he can sit in his corner and I can sit on mine and Locke can sit on the other side of you, and maybe we can share enough body heat. Hawk—sir—the scar tissue—does she have body fat under it? Can body fat develop under that scar tissue, or does she have problems keeping warm like she has keeping cool?"

Hawk realized he didn't know. "I don't know. But she's cold and she has no clothes and this god damned rain doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon, so it can't hurt to try." He looked up to see one of the 82nd's soldier standing just outside the stockade fence, looking at them; he glared back, and after a moment the other soldier looked away—then walked away.

It took a monumental effort from Cam to get to her hands and knees and heave herself into the corner; but once she was there Hawk stripped off the scrub top he was wearing as a 'POW camp uniform' and wedged it through the chain link, inch by inch, until it was on her side, still warm from his own body heat. She didn't even protest; she slid it on gratefully, and huddled into the corner, trying to get as far out of the way of the driving rain as she could. The ground was saturated and the dirt floor of their pens was turning into mud, but she didn't seem to care as she leaned against the corner trying to take as full advantage of the available body heat as she could.

Hawk took a quick glance; around him the other trainees were doing the same, and he forced himself to take deep even breaths, to not shiver as a few stray drops of wind-driven rain hit his bare skin. He was absolutely not going to take his shirt back from Cam even if she tried to give it to him, she needed it more than he did—but the shared body heat from the four clustered in the corner seemed to help, and he soon found his eyes drifting closed of their own accord.


	21. Chapter 21: RTL Day 4

**Chapter 21: RTL Day Four**

"Sir." The soft voice woke Hawk out of a sound sleep. "Hawk. Wake up."

"Wh—what?" As soon as his eyes opened, he groaned. He was stiff and sore, his back ached from being pressed against the chain-link fence, and he was cold.

And the rain, instead of slacking, was even worse. Wind tossed the nearby tree leaves and because of the driving rain he could hardly see the treeline that lay not ten feet beyond the west stockade fence. "Cam?"

"It's me, sir." Her voice was steady and she sounded almost normal. "Sir. It's day four. We're allowed to try escape on day four. I say we make a break for it now while the guards all think we're sleeping and they're reluctant to come out here in this rain." She hesitated, then blew out her breath all at once. "I don't like this storm. It's been raining the last two days and instead of moving off it seems to be getting worse. And the winds started yesterday and have steadily been picking up all night. If we don't make a break for it, I don't know that the airlift team will be able to get us out."

Hawk thought about that. As soon as the trainees 'escaped' the SERE POW compound at Camp Mackall, the camp personnel were supposed to radio Fort Bragg for the airlift team, and the airlift team would be waiting at the prearranged 'extraction point' to get the trainees to Fort Bragg; their belongings would follow on a truck later. If the storm intensified like Cam was saying it would, that airlift wouldn't be able to get them out, and they'd all fail; the exercise wasn't over until they were back at Fort Bragg. "If it was a serious storm they'd bring us in, wouldn't they?" he asked, trying to think through the exhaustion and hunger. There were at least four interrogation cells in the concrete bunker, and those would serve as holding if the pens became unusable.

"I don't know. Sir, I'll be honest—when I was seven we had a storm that felt like this at Osan. I remember Papa calling it a cyclone, but over here in the US they're called hurricanes."

"A hurricane!" But it made sense. The driving rain, the worsening wind… "But Camp Mackall was built far away from the coast to prevent this sort of thing from happening." They were roughly about a third of the way across the state, where the mountains met the North Carolina coast. The Outer Banks, which were the usual targets of a hurricane, were almost two hours away by car.

"I don't know, Sir. Without weather radios we can't tell, and I don't know if the 82nd will give us any information. And as to whether Broadview will bring us in…Sir, he would with you all, but …I couldn't tell you if he would with me."

The thought of Broadview leaving Cam out here to face a hurricane alone decided Hawk. If anything else, pushing their 'airlift' up a day would get them back to Fort Bragg a bit sooner, and those stab wounds in Cam's neck could be treated and someone could put antibiotic on those sores around her wrists, ankles, and throat before they got infected. And he could start the process of bringing a complaint against Broadview for how this training had been handled. "All right," he nodded. "How do we get out?"

For answer Cam moved out of his line of sight, and he had to smile a little. When they'd first arrived the floor had been dirt, so dry and hard-packed it was like stone, but the driving rains had flooded the entire stockade, turning the pens into muddy pig wallows, and it had been ridiculously easy for Cam to scrape away enough mud with her bare hands that she could wiggle under the chain link; it wasn't secured to the ground, after all. He couldn't help staring at the mud, then at Cam's bare butt sitting in it, and he fervently hoped she wouldn't develop some sort of infection from the mud and dirt—and of course she still had her period and she hadn't been allowed any sort of feminine hygiene products to protect her femininity—what was left of it—from the elements and from contamination. Another charge he was going to bring against Broadview and the instructors.

"All right," he nodded. "Let's try it before the guard changes."

There was a kind of stifled, muted cheer off to his left, and he turned, to see Warren's pen already had a hole dug in the mud under the fence. He stared, then turned to look at Lewis, on his right. Same thing.

"She already had us talked into it," Warren said, looking slightly sheepish. "But you're the ranking officer here, and you probably have more combat experience than the rest of us combined so we said we'd wait for your judgment."

Hawk didn't bother wasting his breath on an answer; he grimly bent to the task of digging his way out.

He moved as quickly as he dared; it occurred to him that it seemed to be taking an awfully long time for the guard to change. Cam wriggled under her fence and slipped through the pouring gray curtain of rain to the stockade fence, and when Lewis joined her, they both started to dig their way under that too. By the time Hawk was out of his pen, he was the last one still left in the stockade; the others had already dug their escape holes and were waiting just inside the treeline.

He started to wriggle under the chain link, sucking in his breath to make his waist and profile as flat as he could. The rain was developing into rivers in the mud, and mud was filling the hole as fast as Cam was scooping it out from under him; he could see her hands, nails broken and dirt-crusted, knuckles scraped and bleeding as she desperately dug, dog-like, burrowing under him so that he could get out without scraping his bare back on the barbed wire of the stockade fence.

He heard a shout behind him, and suddenly the stockade fence was illuminated as the camp floodlights shone fully on him and Cam. "Go!" he yelled at her. "Go, I'm stuck, leave me and go!"

"We don't leave anyone behind, sir!" she shouted over the howling wind and the loud camp alarms, and she grabbed his wrists and pulled.

She was a lot stronger than she looked, and the mud let go of him with a loud sucking sound. She fell over backward, with him on top of her, and they struggled for a moment to untangle themselves, blinded by the brightness of the light around them, before they managed to get to their feet and run for the treeline.

The camp's floodlights could only penetrate the curtain of rain and the thick underbrush for a few feet before being cut off, and the trainees found themselves in darkness. Or…not quite darkness, not fully; it was dawn, and even through the driving rain and the high wind he was starting to be able to see individual objects.

Like the thick kudzu vine wrapped around the trunk of the tree in front of him.

She saw it at the same time he did, and her hands were yanking on it, frantic, and he grabbed for the other end. They stripped it of its leaves as they went until they had a long, thick vine, and Cam tied one end around her waist, the other end around his. "All right, I'll take point. Hawk, rear. Everybody else spread out along the line! Keep one hand on the vine at all times so we don't lose you, the ground is saturated and could give way at any moment. Figure out who's behind you, who's in front of you, and if someone falls yank hard on the vine to let us know we lost someone so we can stop!"

"Do you even know where we are?" Hawk called out to her.

"We go this way!" and she pointed in the direction she was facing.

"How do you know?" he called back to her.

She pointed to the tree they'd just pulled the kudzu vine from. "Moss grows on the south side of a tree. There's less on the north face. And Camp Mackall was southwest of Fort Bragg, so we need to head in a northeast direction until we reach the river. There's a cleared spot by the river that's supposed to be our airlift point. We have to get there before it gets too bad to lift off!"

He gestured, and she started off; the rest of the trainees followed in a line; Hawk could see in the gray light of the hurricane-tossed dawn that Stanton was in front of him, and he'd seen Ryder right behind Cam. Warren was somewhere in the middle; good, there would be a strong leader at the front, the rear, and the middle.

She was setting what he would have considered a punishing pace, but as the hurricane dawn gave way to a wild day, he felt the urgency somehow communicate down the line and no one was complaining, even if they'd had the strength or breath to do so. The winds picked up until they were being buffeted, and progress slowed to barely a crawl as their path became increasingly difficult due to the rivers of mud in the soil; his canvas POW shoes were soaked and slipped and he cursed as he almost lost one; he wondered for a moment if Cam had lost hers.

_Wait a minute; she doesn't have any!_

Jesus fucking Christ. _She's got no shoes. _She was slogging through this forest in bare feet because they hadn't had shoes that fit her! He didn't even want to imagine what she must be feeling…but there was no time to stop, even though he wanted to. The longer they took to get to the airlift site, the worse their chances were of getting out of there. The winds and rains were still increasing, so the hurricane hadn't even reached full strength yet…dear God, how bad was this? A Category One? He couldn't remember the last time the US had been hit by anything larger or fiercer than a tropical storm, and usually they didn't reach this far inland—Camp Mackall was almost two hundred miles from the Carolina coast. If this was a hurricane it would have to be a monster storm. _Hurricane winds are eighty miles an hour. Have these winds hit eighty yet?_

As if in answer to his question, the trees around them bent almost seventy degrees as a huge gust of wind hit them, and an enormous old oak tree on the hillside above them creaked alarmingly_. Is that going to go over?_ was his first thought, a split second before the tree started to lean, really _really_ lean, and as his eyes traveled down the trunk to its roots he saw the saturated, soaked earth give way as the weight of the leaning tree and its trunk ripped the tree's roots out of the ground. He stared, paralyzed, as the tree started to topple over.

"It's going over!" Cam's scream was pitched to carry over the sound of the crashing tree, the howl of wind and the driving rain. "Everyone grab the vine and don't let go, whatever happens!"

Since the end of the vine was tied around his waist, Hawk didn't have a choice of whether to let go or not as the vine, influenced by whatever Cam was doing at the front of the line, lurched sharply to his right. He grimly threw his weight behind it, surmising that Cam was trying to get them out of the way before that tree fell.

In the line ahead of them, he heard screams, shouts, but he grimly planted his feet, tried to anchor the back end of the line and keep an eye out of the trainee in front of him, making sure the guy was still holding on as they half-slid, half tumbled down what felt like a terrifyingly steep slope away from the tree on the hillside above them. A small sapling had grown about halfway up the slope between the trainees and the falling oak, and the oak's progress seemed to pause for a moment as the sapling tried to stand against the weight of the giant old tree crushing it. The effort, and the sapling, didn't last long.

But it was enough. Something happened toward the front of the line, a huge weight suddenly yanked it forward, and Hawk lost his footing on the muddy slope and fell. They slid, shouting and screaming as they tumbled down the slope, all attempts at orderly descent and staying in line gone as the vine yanked all of them off their feet and sent them rolling to the bottom of the hill. Hawk stopped rolling as he hit muddy dirt and cold water at the bottom of the hill, and he scrambled to his feet and looked up immediately.

The tree came down across the stream just to their left.

He stared at the hillside. He could see the marks in the soil where they'd started their descent ahead of the falling tree; could see that they had been right in the path of where the tree fell. There were numerous other trees around them, some of them mature trees, some of them mere saplings like the one that had delayed the oak's fall before that last desperate forward yank. But the tree had fallen exactly where they'd been standing.

He was still standing there shaking his head at their near miss when Warren's voice cut into his thoughts. "Hawk!"

He looked down, and thoughts of their near miss fled his mind. "Cam!"

She lay in a crumpled heap half in and half out of the shallow stream, unconscious; Warren and Demo were carefully lifting her out and laying her down on the bank of the stream. It was shortly going to be underwater; the small creek was a raging torrent from the rivers of rain that were draining into it. The other trainees were clustered together, squinting in the driving rain but quiet as Hawk knelt to check her pulse and breathing. "She was at the front of the line. I think she saw the tree was going to come down, and she started to try and move us all out of the way. But then when it hit that sapling—I saw it on her face, she knew we weren't going to be able to get out of the way in time."

"She was in front of us, and I saw the look on her face, she was terrified and she knew what could happen but she did it anyway. She just tucked her feet and threw herself down the hill, and she hit all of us going down, knocking us over and dragging us all down with her. If it hadn't been for that a couple of us might still have gotten hit by that tree."

"Cam. Cam, answer me." Hawk gently explored her skull with his fingers, easier because she didn't have all that long hair anymore, but it was harder to tell if she had bumps because of the raw red patches on her scalp from having locks of her hair torn out of her head. He winced at the memory.

He started at her ankles and felt her long bones, one at a time. Nothing apparently broken in her lower legs, her thigh bones were intact. Her lower arms were fine, her upper arms intact. He pushed the scrub top she was wearing up; she'd lost weight during these exercises and she was even thinner than she'd been when he'd first seen her standing nude in the classroom at Camp Mackall. Then, she'd been slim; now she was just plain skinny. Her bones stood out in stark relief under the white scar tissue that coated her torso.

Hips looked and felt fine; he slid a hand under her back, felt her spine; she seemed intact. It wasn't until he slid a hand up the right side of her ribcage that he got a pain reaction; she gave a tiny gasp and her eyelids fluttered.

Did she hit a tree? He wondered. He didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until Valverde said, "That's where Broadview kicked her."

Jesus. He'd forgotten about that. He looked down. "There's no bruise." And then he kicked himself mentally. Blood supply had been largely cut off to the scar tissue from fire trauma; she would have reduced or no subcutaneous blood flow from which to bruise. That didn't mean it didn't hurt.

And another thought, one that chilled him. _If Broadview knows that bruises don't show on her scar tissue, he could have beaten her in the interrogation room and no one would have known. _Granted, Colonel Potter was supposed to have been there keeping her under close medical supervision, but could Broadview have kicked or hit her when he was yanking her around the camp on that damn dog leash?

Her eyelids fluttered again, and she groaned, and he brought his attention back to the here-and-now. "Cam. Cam, say something. Come on, soldier."

"H-Hawk?"

He leaned over her, using his bulk to block out some of the driving rain pelting her face. "Right here, Cam. We're all here, thanks to you. You did good, soldier."

"Yes, sir." Her face twisted in pain. "Sir, I hurt."

"Where? Where does it hurt?"

"Right here." She pressed a hand to her side, right where he'd touched a moment earlier. "Owww."

"Is that where Broadview kicked you?" She dropped her eyes, didn't answer. "Arlington. Answer me. Is that where Broadview kicked you?"

"I hit a tree on the way down."

"She did," Lewis nodded. "Collided with that sapling over there." He indicated a tree growing on what used to be the bank of that stream; now it was growing out of the middle of a rapidly rising swollen creek. "That's when she blacked out."

Hawk looked around, made a decision. "The wind has picked up too much since we left Camp Mackall. If the airlift team even managed to get out of Fort Bragg they'll be grounded at the airlift site until this is over, so we might as well stop for now." He looked at the silent group of trainees around him, thinking of each one, what he knew they were capable of, and tried not to curse. Out of all of them, Cam was the most capable at finding shelter and food; her Iroquois knowledge was invaluable, and right now he couldn't let her move until he figured out if the pain in her side was just bruised ribs or if, God forbid, they were broken. "Split up into two teams, see if you can find a suitable place to camp. We're going to stop until the worst of this passes."


	22. Chapter 22: Plans

**Chapter 22: Plans**

"Jesus, can you believe the size of this storm?" Dash's voice caught Allie's attention as she walked past the doorway to the administrative office.

Allie came in and stepped around the back of Hawk's desk (Flint's desk for now, as Interim Base Commander) and hitched a hip up on the desktop, then looked at the weather map displayed on the monitor in the room. "That's huge. Look at that space satellite picture. How big is that?"

"Weatherman says it's practically the size of Texas at about three hundred square miles. It's supposed to make landfall in North Carolina sometime tomorrow morning."

"Is it still a category two?"

"No, they've downgraded it to a category one, fortunately, but it's still going to be a hell of a wild night down there tonight. And tomorrow will be unimaginable."

"Well, Clayton's inland at Camp Mackall, so it shouldn't be a factor. I wonder if they'll cut the SERE training short because of this, or if they're going to suspend until it blows over and then finish."

"They're going to have to cut it short. There are trees and power outages already being reported all over the state and it hasn't even made landfall yet, and Fort Bragg's already being mobilized as the central point for any potential relief supply drop-offs." Dash was silent for a while, scrolling through news reports, forecasts, and predictions, and then sighed. "It's not as if he's really going to miss anything. He only had a couple more days to the end of the course anyway. By the time North Carolina knew the hurricane was going to make landfall he should have been in the middle of the RTL, and Camp Mackall's built inland for just this purpose. I don't even know if they'd bother telling the trainees what's going on; you know how they open up an avenue of escape after about the fourth day? They'd probably just make sure the trainees can't escape, close off any possible escape routes, and just put N/A on the 'escape assessment' form when they notate the official records. Hawk's gonna be wet and cold in that POW pen but that's about it. And if they're really worried they'll just bring the trainees inside and house them in the solitary confinement cells until it blows over."

"And when he got done with the course and found out about this hurricane he'd blow up at them and ask why he wasn't informed." Allie grinned.

"Yeah, he would. It would be just like him." Dash grinned and returned his attention to the screen. "And Mayor Blumburg just released the maps of potential evacuation zones in the Five Boroughs. We're not in one of them, but some of the low-lying areas of Staten Island are being evacuated, and I'm guessing we're going to be asked to mobilize along with the National Guard to evacuate some of those areas. They did say an evacuation of Staten Island University Hospital's expected."

"I'll let Doc know. He'll probably want to go there and help that cute little nurse he's been dating." Allie grinned as she slid her hip off the desk.

Dash took a swat at her rump as she stretched. "Still teasing him about that 'cute little nurse'?"

Allie grinned wider. "Payback for him teasing Ettienne about dating Alex. Ettienne's so blissfully happy he could care less, but I want to make it a point of reminding everyone about Clayton's policy change before some of the new recruits get the wrong idea and decide to file a report. At this exact moment we kind of don't need any more official attention—we got enough of it this summer with the whole Operation: White Queen thing."

"I'll say." Dash grinned at her just as the phone rang, and he sighed as he picked it up. "General Clayton Abernathy's office, Warrant Officer Dash Faireborn speaking."

The smile dropped off his face even as his voce sharpened. "What the hell? Sorry, Base Commander Hilton—could you repeat that again?" He was hitting the speaker button even as he spoke.

An unfamiliar male voice came over the speaker. "I'm calling to inform you that General Clayton Abernathy is missing at the moment, whereabouts unknown."

Lady Jaye's jaw dropped, but Flint beat her to her next words. "Colonel. Sir. Request information on how this happened. According to our copy of the itinerary, General Abernathy was supposed to be in the RTL at Camp Mackall this week. We figured you would have cut off all possible methods of escape and bring them into the solitary confinement bunkers to wait out the storm, if you didn't end the exercise a couple days early."

"The initial plan was to bring the twelve trainees into the solitary confinement bunkers for the duration of the storm and put them through an extra Interrogation phase training exercise in lieu of the escape and airlift operation that traditionally closes the exercise so that we wouldn't have to interrupt the training with the storm. We thought we had closed off all available routes of escape but they did find a way out. We assume they are heading for the prearranged airlift point but communication has been cut off due to power loss at Fort Bragg and no airlift team has been sent, or _can_ be sent until this hurricane moves past and power is restored—that could take days. At this moment they are somewhere out in North Carolina between Camp Mackall and Fort Bragg."

"They are out. In that. In the hurricane." Flint closed his eyes. "Please tell me they have at least some basic issue materials with them."

"Unfortunately they managed to escape early this evening after the second PT phase and just prior to the point where the winds picked up. At this moment we are experiencing—" they lost Base Commander Hilton's next words in a burst of static. "—so no, they don't have anything except those POW camp uniforms."

"Base Commander—" But another burst of static drowned Flint out, and moments later the line went dead.

Lady Jaye stared at Flint. "They'll be all right, Flint. He'll be all right."

"Are you trying to convince me or you?" Flint smiled, but his eyes were shadowed with worry. "I'm not going to sit and twiddle my thumbs." He grabbed the phone, punched in a number. "Warrant Officer Dashiell Faireborn, Interim Commander of Project G.I. Joe. I need to speak with Lieutenant General Johnson. It's a bit of an emergency."

And to their absolute surprise, Lieutenant General Johnson was on the line minutes later. "What can I do for you, Warrant Officer? What's the big emergency?"

"Sir. I just fielded a call from Camp Mackall in North Carolina. General Abernathy was sent down there earlier this month to participate in a SERE-C course as a refresher, no doubt as a direct result from the events of Operation: White Queen. Hawk's training group achieved their escape from Camp Mackall's stockade earlier today, but power has been knocked out to Fort Bragg, so communication with them to send out an airlift team is currently impossible and will not be possible until the hurricane is past and power is restored to the base."

"They escaped? Today? In that?" Johnson sounded incredulous as Flint felt. "How in God's name did they manage to escape? And why were they still in the stockade anyway, the training should have been suspended as soon as Mackall found out the hurricane was going to make landfall in North Carolina! How the hell did they manage to lose a decorated American General and a class of trainees?"

"I don't have the answers to that, Sir, we weren't on the phone long with Camp Mackall before communications ceased rather abruptly. I assume that they believed they were sufficiently far enough inland that the full effects of the hurricane shouldn't have bothered them, but I can't be sure. The only thing I know for certain is that General Hawk is out there with a group of eleven SERE-C trainees in the North Carolina wilderness in the middle of the worst hurricane the East Coast has seen in a decade and he has no supplies, not even basic-issue military supply kits. They escaped in POW stockade clothing and nothing else."

Lieutenant General Johnson choked. "Jesus. Okay, so I assume you're calling me because you want me to authorize a search and rescue."

"That was my intention, Sir, yes. I know we're trampling all over Camp Makall and Fort Bragg's sovereignty, but this is something of an emergency."

"Do you have a plan for how to get there without heading down into the storm yourself?"

Flint thought rapidly—Lady Jaye could almost see the wheels turning in his head. "We can leave tomorrow morning for Letterkenny Army Depot in Southern PA, right off the Pennsylvania/Maryland line, then jump to Fort Bragg once the storm has passed beyond North Carolina. Their communications may be out and they may be cut off, but we should be able to get there by air and then mount a search and rescue while the main force at the installation is helping with relief efforts—they'll probably welcome the extra help. But the team we send is going to have to prepare to stay at Fort Bragg for about a week, maybe more, depending on what the East Coast, and New York, looks like after the hurricane."

Johnson sounded approving. "Good thinking, Warrant Officer. Put a team together; you have my authorization for a search and rescue mission and to assist relief efforts down there. Send me the paperwork as soon as possible; I can have it signed and faxed back to you in an hour. Not that I don't think General Hawk can't take care of himself down there, but a group of green trainees and a hurricane and no supplies is not something to play around with; anything can happen, a flash flood, a downed tree, snapped power lines. Get your commander out of there." Silence for a moment. Then, "You're also authorized to assist with the relief efforts down there. And while you're there, find out how this happened. I want a full report on how it happened and why. Feel free to stay there until General Hawk is ready to leave and bring him back with you, so we don't have to make transportation arrangements for his return to your base. The paperwork alone gives me a headache and I don't think you want to wrestle with it either."

"Thank you, Sir. I'll have that paperwork ready for you in an hour." Lady Jaye had to hide a smile, despite the grimness of the situation. Flint's dislike of paperwork was legendary around base. So was Hawk's, but his patience for administrative minutia was better than Flint's. Slightly. But when it involved something he wanted done, no one could scribble faster than Flint.

"Good Luck, Warrant Officer. I'll be looking forward to that report." Johnson clicked off.

Flint yanked open Hawk's desk drawer, starting to pull out handfuls of forms from different folders. "Lady Jaye. Got any idea who I should send on this search and rescue?"

"Wild Bill should go. In fact, he'll want to. He's a Warrant Officer, and he's Air Force, so it'll be clear to Base Commander Hilton that he's not under Hilton's command. His primary orders should be to find General Hawk, and helping with relief efforts should be secondary. With Lieutenant General Johnson's signature on the authorization form, even if Hilton does complain Johnson's orders supersede his own." Allie was thinking fast. "Emergency medical personnel, Lifeline, Stretcher—in case of casualties—and I think I'll ask Spirit to go."

"Charlie? Why Charlie?"

"Charlie IronKnife's the best tracker we have. If Clayton's training group is lost he'll be able to find them. And he found that cedar blank Hawk wanted for that female Ranger, so he can give it to Hawk in person. Or give it to the female Ranger himself." Despite the grimness of the situation, Allie smiled. "It should be interesting. And I'd like to go too. Clayton asked me for some information about that female Ranger and I know he's thinking about adding her to our complement here, and I'd like to meet her before I tell him yes or no. Her record is exemplary, though there are a few personal things I'd like to ask her about, even though they're non-job-related."

"You want to go to satisfy your curiosity."

"Um. Yeah." She never could hide anything from him.

"So. Team of five. To pick Hawk and eleven trainees." His pen was flying over the forms. "Go ahead and talk to Wild Bill, Spirit, Lifeline and Stretcher and let them know you all will be leaving tomorrow morning—I figure if you leave just as the hurricane's making landfall in North Carolina, by the time you reach Letterkenny you'll be just in time to pass it as it's going up the coast, and you can land in Fort Bragg by about ten AM the day after tomorrow. I'm confident Hawk's gonna be able to keep eleven trainees alive until the day after tomorrow."

"We _are_ going to make it. Don't doubt that." Hawk said fiercely to the rest of the trainees.

The rain and wind had been too fierce for the teams to go and find any better spot to camp, and when they'd experimentally tried to get Cam into his arms to carry her, one look at her pain-wracked grimace—even if she didn't cry or complain—told Hawk it wasn't going to be a good idea. He'd ascertained her injury to be either a very mild rib fracture or a very bad bruise, and the only reason he couldn't determine if it was a bad bruise was because her skin didn't show the discoloration normally associated with bruising.

Either way, she was in pretty bad shape and moving her wasn't a good idea at the moment. By his closest estimate she hadn't had anything to eat in roughly a day now; it had been last night that Broadview had hacked off her hair, they'd escaped that morning, and now it was nightfall again. The abundant rain ensured that they all had plenty of water to drink; all you had to do was open your mouth—but she was running low on energy and because of the extensive scarring and the exertion of the SERE training she didn't have the reserves of body fat that most of the rest of them had; Clayton remembered carrying her to the infirmary after the footlocker incident, and she was definitely lighter now. It wasn't unexpected—SERE trainees typically dropped an average of fifteen pounds during the course—but training on her had been more strenuous than it had been on the rest of them.

And her feet were a mess.

The pace she'd set to try and get them to this point had been horrific for her. Her bare feet had been torn by sharp stones, sticks, dirt and thorny branches and debris, and they were swollen, cut and bleeding now. Hawk didn't know how she'd forced herself to keep going on them, could only hope that adrenaline had helped her bear some of it, and knew she wasn't going to be walking comfortably for a week after they got out.

They'd decided to make camp in the fallen branches of the old oak. Backing away from the swollen stream, they'd sought shelter in the spreading branches and the heavy foliage helped block some of the rain. There wasn't a dry stick of wood in the entire forest and neither the wind nor the rain would have allowed a fire even had they had a way to make one. They had no basic-issue tools and no survival equipment, and the entire situation was a nightmare as they huddled together, sharing body heat and just trying to stay warm.

"We should have stayed at Camp Mackall," he said now, feeling responsibility for them settle on his shoulders. "I'm sorry, guys. They wouldn't have left us out there in this."

"They wouldn't have left _us_ in the pens in this, no," came Warren's voice in the darkness. "But Jesus, we all saw what he did to Cam. You know what he's capable of. He doesn't like her and he's been deliberately making things difficult for her."

Everyone heard the loathing in his voice now. "I don't think women should be forward of the front lines. But she did real well getting that pig, and you guys—Team B—didn't have nearly as bad a time out there during S&E as we did, and I know that was partly her doing, and I respect her for that even if I don't like her personally. But what Broadview did to her, yanking out her hair like that—I will swear in a military court that what he did to her couldn't have been in the training manual."

"You'll swear to it?' Hawk asked evenly in the darkness.

"Yes," Warren said unhesitatingly.

"Me too," Demo said firmly. "I can swear to the PT and the lack of concern for her personal health and safety when she almost died of hyperthermia. And then the incident with her hair. And not having shoes for her, and not giving her clothes. I'll swear to it."

"Even if it means your careers? The military doesn't like whistleblowers."

Ryder's voice came out of the darkness. "If our military tolerates something like this happening in training to students I don't want to be part of it. What about your career?"

"I'm not really worried about mine."

"Because you're higher rank than everybody else at Camp Mackall and possibly at Fort Bragg too?"

"How did you know that?"

"I overheard Base Commander Hilton talking. There's a letter waiting for you to open after the exercise and it was addressed to General Clayton Abernathy. Broadview was wondering aloud what you'd said about the training and Hilton told him there wouldn't be anything to tell if he hadn't gotten carried away."

So Hilton was aware that Broadview hadn't liked Cam, had let his personal dislike of her affect how he treated her, and had allowed it to continue. A hard knot of anger settled into Hawk's stomach as he shifted position against Cam's unconscious back. "Yes, I'm General Clayton Abernathy. That's General with two stars, so I'm pretty damn sure when I raise a stink about all of this someone's going to listen. So, thanks for all your support, I may need it. Now try and get some sleep and hope this blows over by morning."


	23. Chapter 23: Rescue

**Chapter 23: Rescue**

Morning brought a little improvement in the environmental conditions. Not that the rain and wind had slacked off any, but the improvement lay in that it wasn't getting any _worse_. It seemed to be at a steady plateau, and while tree branches were crashing down all over the forest and other trees were also coming down, the trunk and branches of the giant old oak were sturdy enough and sufficiently broad enough that the falling branches and trees weren't affecting the huddled group of trainees. The oak branches were like the skeletal framework of a house, and the leaves and other debris tossed on top of it was acting as an insulating 'siding'. Several times that morning two of the guys went out and dragged more of the larger fallen branches up against their hidesite, with the result that it was actually starting to get a little warmer inside the screening greenery.

Cam woke soon after daybreak—Hawk figured this out by the fact that it was light enough for him to see her face twist in anguish. "Hey, easy," he said, and she squeezed her eyes shut, took a few deep breaths.

Her eyes, when she opened them, was glazed with tears of pain but she was conscious and coherent. "Where are we?" she croaked.

"Hiding under the oak that nearly fell on us." It was ironic that the tree they'd been worried about killing them when it fell was actually right now helping them stay alive. "We've dragged more leaves and branches over and it's getting warmer in here. We're still lying next to each other to keep warm, but it's not as bad as it was last night."

"How's the storm?" she tried to sit up, but he prevented her, pushing her back down.

"It's stopped getting worse, so I'm assuming this is the worst it's going to get. It has to be a hurricane; I've never seen a normal storm this bad. We decided last night that there was no way the airlift team would get out here, and there was no way we could get to the airlift point."

"Because of me." She squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm sorry."

"Stop that," he said, but she shook her head.

"Don't say it's going to be okay, because it isn't. The only reason we're trapped out here was because I talked you guys into it. And now you're going to fail because of me." She was clearly feeling guilty about it. "You should have left me and kept going to the airlift point."

"Cam. We're not leaving anyone behind. This is training, not a real combat POW scenario. And we had some perfectly valid reasons for not staying. Yes, in hindsight we should have stayed, but I'm not sure that Broadview would have brought all of us in from the storm."

"No. He wouldn't have. But the only one he would have left outside was me, and the rest of you would have completed the course. Now you're going to fail because of me."

"Why are you so sure that Broadview would have left you outside?" Not that the surmise didn't jive with what Hawk knew of Broadview personally, but he was curious why Cam was so certain she wouldn't receive equal treatment. "Did he say anything in the interrogation rooms?"

"You know we're not supposed to discuss it except with our debriefing officer."

"To hell with the rules, Cam, Broadview wasn't playing by them and after what he did with your hair, I'm not going to play by them either. The moment he violated the rules he nullified the entire rulebook." She was silent. "Cam."

"I can't. I'm sorry."

He struggled not to lose his temper. She was hungry, cold, and hurting, and she wasn't thinking straight. "Why?"

Her voice was a mere whisper. "Because if I tell you, you'll try to bring charges against them on my behalf. It'll be costly and messy and if you get any of the guys to testify they'll lose their careers. Better for me to fail this course than for all of you to lose your careers."

So something Broadview had done to her in interrogation had been clearly outside the rules, and she knew it, and she was going to swallow it silently and take it instead of fighting. "Ranger Arlington. I'm ordering you to tell me what happened."

Her voice was a mere whisper. "I'm sorry, General Abernathy. I cannot comply with your order."

"Insubordination is a dischargable offense, Ranger Arlington."

Her hands clenched around each other so hard the knuckles turned white. "Then I will accept discharge, sir. I cannot violate the nondisclosure agreement I signed."

"What the hell are you protecting that son of a fucking bitch for, Cam?" Warren burst out, unable to stay silent any longer. "What he did to you was outright abuse, maybe borderline torture. You nearly died because he ignored a preexisting medical condition. There were other ways he could have tired you out than PT in a hundred and seven degree heat."

"I'm not doing this to protect him, don't you understand?" She cried, pushing herself up to a sitting position. "I'm doing this to protect _you_. I'd rather fail this course and be given a discharge than to drag all of you down with me."

"But we don't want to be protected. Cam, after what I saw, after what I saw a commanding officer _allow _to be done to you—I don't want to be a part of the same military system that lets a personal feud get carried so far that someone could nearly die for it." Ryder was earnestly quiet. "Whether or not you want to participate, Hawk's already said he's going to raise hell about what happened, and I agreed to testify. Warren too."

"We all will," came Lewis's voice.

Cam dropped her eyes and didn't answer, but Hawk could feel the tightness in her body, feel the anguish she was trying to hide. "All right. Talking about this now isn't going to help. Let's just focus on getting out of this alive and we'll worry about what to do later." If he had to he'd shanghai her off to Joe base and see if Lady Jaye and Scarlett could talk some sense into her. Maybe even Liv and Alex; they were experienced at dealing with victims and getting said victims to testify. "Cam; we're relatively protected under here, and it's getting warmer and drier. Do you know any ways of starting a fire that doesn't require tools? At this point I'm even open to rubbing two sticks together if it come to that." Cam cracked a wan smile, though he detected relief at the change in topic. _I haven't forgotten,_ he promised silently in his head. _I'll figure out how to get to you. I'm just waiting until we get out of here._

"It's a little more complicated than rubbing two sticks together, but I'm pretty sure we'll be able to manage the trick," she said. "Can you find me two sticks, some tinder—dry grass or something? I know everything seems soaked but some of the larger branches might still have some dry wood left at the core of the branch."

Under her direction they set about enlarging their hidesite by snapping extra branches off the underside of the tree trunk they'd sheltered under, leaving just enough to support the trunk. It opened up more space under the trunk, and a couple of the guys went out again, braving the rain and wind, and piled more fallen branches against both sides of the tree, creating a long roughly triangular inner chamber with 'walls' sloping toward the 'top' of their hidesite—the tree trunk. By the time they came back in, she'd created enough friction with sticks that she had a small but smoky fire going; and it was so welcome that two of the guys turned and went right back out for more sticks to add to it once they dried out in the relative shelter of their improvised hidesite.

Ryder and Demo vanished soon after, and Hawk was just getting concerned when they came back with what looked like armfuls of wet greenery—and everyone cheered raggedly as they recognized the wild potatoes Cam had introduced all of them too, and well as some wild carrot. The potatoes were wrapped in wet leaves and set by the fire to 'bake'; not long, because they were all hungry and the potatoes barely had time to cook before they were eaten, and no one complained. Carrots were eaten raw.

Demo had found a small dirty plastic water bottle out in the woods somewhere, and brought it back full of water from the now swollen creek. He put it as close to the fire as he dared, warming it while waiting for some of the sediment to settle to the bottom, then carefully tested the temperature as he brought it over to Cam. She stared at him suspiciously.

"I wanted to wash your feet, they're dirty and cut and bleeding and you can't afford for them to get infected. And we should check the cuts on the back of your neck, too." She swallowed hard, her eyes misting, and nodded.

Hawk cursed himself for seven kinds of a fool for not thinking of this earlier as Ryder brought a small burning stick over for Demo to see by as he used the warm water to clean the bleeding gashes on the back of her neck, then illuminated the soles of her feet. They looked even worse in the firelight, swollen and cut, with dirt ground deeply into the torn flesh. One deep cut straight across the ball of her foot made her cry out when Demo touched it.

"Oh God, I know it hurts, I'm sorry, Cam, but we have to get your feet clean. When the storm moves past we're going to have to try to get to the airlift site—that's where they'll expect us to head, so that's where we need to be. And it's still a bit of a walk away from here."

"I know," Cam's fists were clenched, her teeth gritted. "Give me that stick." Puzzled, Ryder handed it to her. They watched uncomprehendingly as she shook it briskly to put it out until it was just glowing, and Hawk only understood her intention when she pressed the still-glowing stick to the cut on her foot.

"No—!" But she'd already done it. Her face twisted in a grotesque grimace of agony as she gasped for breath through gritted teeth, but somehow she endured the pain of cauterizing her own foot. The stick finally dropped from her nerveless fingers as she gave vent to a sobbed scream of agony, the only sound she permitted herself before she crumpled into unconsciousness.

"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," breathed Warren as he crossed his chest, and it wasn't a curse, it was a prayer as the stench of burned flesh filled their little hidesite. Demo grabbed up the plastic bottle and ran back out, coming back a little later with water, which he again placed by the fire, waited impatiently for the sediment to settle and the water to warm a little, then poured it over the cauterized foot. Cam roused then at the feel of the cool water on her foot, and she whimpered a little.

"Don't do that again. Ever. Christ." Ryder ducked outside and moments later they heard the sound of him getting sick just outside their hidesite.

"I'm sorry. I had to. We have to get to the airlift site and I'm going to have to walk. There's no way around it. I have to be mobile."

"Jesus, Cam, no you don't! We could take turns carrying you!"

She rolled her eyes at that. "Oh my God no. Seriously. I'd much rather walk."

"We'll figure it out later," Hawk said angrily. Why did she have to argue so much? "Get some sleep, all of you. We have fire, shelter, we're warm, and for the moment we're safe and we've had a little something to eat." There'd been one potato and a couple of carrots for each of them. Not much, but it seemed to have done wonders for morale; everyone was looking a little more cheerful.

He waited to take his next move until she was sleeping, her breathing even. The he addressed the others in a low voice. "We've taken care of cleaning her feet and her neck, but she's not wearing any pants or anything below the waist and I'm worried she might develop an infection…elsewhere. I was in a POW escape situation earlier this summer, and I got some firsthand experience at looking at, and caring for, a woman's personal injuries, and I want to make sure she's not physically injured." They seemed to understand what he was saying, and turned around, giving him some privacy as he carefully opened her knees and checked her. She didn't seem injured, and she wasn't even bleeding anymore, so he assumed her period was over. There were no cuts, no tears, no obvious damage, and he felt a tiny measure of relief as he closed her legs and arranged her body a little more comfortably on the bed of leaves the trainees had scrounged up for all of them to lie on.

He fell asleep listening to the rain.

He woke suddenly. Something sounded different.

He almost couldn't figure out what it was at first; the sound of driving rain and howling wind had filled his ears for the last—who knew how long, they had no way to measure the passage of time—and the sudden absence of it was deafening in its silence.

Not quite gone; there was still a faint pattering of rain on the leaves and branches that made up their hidesite. But it was the sound of rain drops, not the absolute downpour that it had been, and when he carefully pushed aside a handful of wet leaves so he could look outside, he could actually see darker gray clouds thinning against a backdrop of puffy whiter clouds.

The hurricane had passed.

"Hey. Hey, guys, wake up. Look. The hurricane's passed!" At the sound of his voice eyes opened, blinked sleepily—and then as his words penetrated, they parted the leaves closest to them and looked out, and a ragged cheer rose as they too saw the thinning storm clouds. "We made it!"

Cam woke then, and shared their jubilation. She was standing, slightly shaky but upright, and she was putting weight down on the cauterized foot; a good sign. Not that Hawk wasn't still planning on carrying her, but he had some ideas…

He set two of the trainees to finding two long, mostly-straight branches they could use as carry poles; then he lashed kudzu vine to them, weaving it in and out, between the poles, until he had a sort of makeshift stretcher. By the time they finished it, the sky was lighter than it had been for days, and the rain was now a sort of light drizzle. Cam protested when he picked her up and put her down on the stretcher, but he was not going to accept arguments from her, and he told her so with real fury in his voice. "Get your ass down on that stretcher and stay there!" he thundered, and _no one_ disobeyed him when he used that tone. He was just hoping no one would realize the real reason why he wanted her to stay off that foot; he'd looked at it when he picked her up and even though Demo had tried to clean it, and Cam had tried to cauterize it, the flesh around that deep cut was looking red and raw and swollen, and in his experience when wounds looked like that it meant they were infected. He wanted her to stay off it and keep it clean until a doctor could look at it; the only time he'd seen her truly happy in the entire month he'd known her was when she was dancing, and he couldn't imagine what a blow that would be if that was taken from her too.

The forest, when their little group of eleven people set out with the twelfth on a stretcher between two of them, looked totally unfamiliar. The sun wasn't out—not exactly, but the white clouds in the sky promised that there was sun just on the other side of it. The creek they'd been camping beside had been a swollen, angry torrent; now it was subsiding, muttering a little to itself but burbling a little as it tried to settle back between its banks. As they got to the top of the hill, Hawk cast a last glance back at their hidesite. It had been an unforgettable two days.

Cam might have protested when he'd picked her up, but after he yelled at her, she seemed inclined to stay in the stretcher. She watched from her prone position, checking for navigating indicators and landmarks that would indicate they were getting close to their target site, but as the day wore on and no airlift site came into view along the creek they paralleled, he started to wonder if she was fevered and not sure of her path. They walked all day, following what Cam said was a northeasterly direction, but it wasn't until late afternoon when the glorious red rays of a brilliant sunset finally broke through the last of the stormclouds was he then absolutely sure that they were on the right path.

They'd foraged along the way, and stopped for the night soon after the last golden glow disappeared below the horizon and night started to fall. This time there was more than just vegetables; they'd taken the precaution of taking burning branches from their hidesite fire and carrying it with them, and they were finding plenty of animals that had been caught by surprise by the storm. A collapsed beaver dam, inundated by floodwater, yielded a few dead beavers, drowned when they were trapped by their collapsed lodge, and the meat, however gamy and disgusting they might have thought it before, was going to taste very, very good when they spitted the animals and roasted them over the built-up fire.

Cam was pleased with the beavers but seemed tired, and fell asleep as they were cooking the animals. Hawk was concerned, but he decided to wait until the meat was cooked before he woke her and tried to get her to eat.

There were three beavers, and they decided one would suffice for each team along with the wild potatoes and berries and other edibles they'd scrounged along the way, and Hawk arranged a portion on a wide kudzu leaf before going over to the stretcher and touching Cam quietly. "Cam. Wake up. Cam."

A rustle in the underbrush caught his attention, and he spun, startled. A moment later, like the spirit of some long-gone Native American, a tall shape materialized out of the brush, a man with two long dark braids and an outfit that was a mix of military fatigues and traditional Navajo garb that Charlie IronKnife favored. And beside him, looking absolutely stunned, was Lady Jaye.

He was so relieved to see her that he felt his eyes stinging. "Um...Care for some beaver?"


End file.
